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

Should women be allowed into combat?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 28.6%
  • No

    Votes: 3 14.3%
  • As long as there's no special treatment

    Votes: 12 57.1%

  • Total voters
    21
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... Rainbows, kittens, puppies, lollipops, and gumdrops?

OMG I can't believe you would even suggest that! It's obviously cotton candy. DUH.
 
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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.
This.

I honestly doubt I need to weight in on the qualifications discussion.
 
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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.

And I have to disagree with this notion. America got itself involved in something that has been happening for centuries. Personally most historic wars I disagree with as well. As said if I could turn back time and go into history. I teach the world how to fight wars with nerdy equivalents to murder. Something that leaves less people broken.
 
War and fighting is in human nature. It doesn't matter how civilized or advanced we are, somebody will always want what someone else has, be it resources, people, strategic locations, or even to curtail their power among dozens of other reasons, someone will always use fighting as means to an end. It's not something you can teach out of people, at the end of the day there's always going to be a desire for more and that alone is enough of a pretense. Whether it's desperation or greed, it isn't hard to gear a nation towards war.

Thus, it is the perogative of a nation to maintain a strong enough military to defend its interests and allies against aggressors because you nay be peaceful, but someone else certainly isn't and may have a strong enough incentive to invade. Just ask Kuwait; they're hardly a nation anyone would consider aggressive and they were invaded by Iraq rather successfully.

That said, we live in the most peaceful time in human history, and more and more nations are building powerful relationships based on trade and mutual benefit instead of resorting to military conflict, but the world still has dozens of conflicts going on at any given time, and that will never stop. We may even reach a point where the world is at peace for a while, but eventually something will give again and fighting will start again somewhere. It's just who we are; we've literally been killing each other since the dawn of our species because we want what others have. Chimpanzees are much the same way; if they were capable, they too would use advanced weaponry for the same reasons we do, which really haven't changed in principle for 20 thousand years.

To strive for and encourage peace is a noble thing, and I personally yearn to see the day when we set aside our hatred and weapons for enough of a time we don't have to throw away so many lives in slaughter. It will never last, but it can show we are capable of world wide peace. It's a hell of an achievement, and I personally want the day to come.

But we will always need a standing military, but how we use it doesn't have to be one of aggression. I am fiercely proud of Canada's armed forces; we do far more humanitarian, peace keeping (hell, we literally invented the concept), and disaster relief operations than armed conflicts, and of those, we have never been the aggressor, it was always a response to something else.

Personally, I don't care if you don't like the military and think war is pointless, but never assume its people are self-centered psychopaths who want to die for nationalism or slaughter people. Most military members legitimately do it because they feel it makes a positive difference in the world, and I've seen enough to know that in Canada at least, the military will always be ready to organize flood, wild fire, and ice storm relief at home and helping others abroad, like the Earthquake operations in Haiti.

Sorry for the off topic tangent, but I've been seeing this thread start to slide into ragging on soldiers and I really feel that a lot of people forget the good that the military does. It's not just about killing and fighting, and while that happens, often the reason is to help someone who cannot help themselves.
 
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War and fighting is in human nature. It doesn't matter how civilized or advanced we are, somebody will always want what someone else has, be it resources, people, strategic locations, or even to curtail their power among dozens of other reasons, someone will always use fighting as means to an end. It's not something you can teach out of people, at the end of the day there's always going to be a desire for more and that alone is enough of a pretense. Whether it's desperation or greed, it isn't hard to gear a nation towards war.

Yet, ironically. I don't have this desire. So I don't think it's human nature, I think it's something we nurture into our nature. But I think war solves nothing. I mean I find it ironic we ahve a country that tells kids who get bullied and beat on a daily basis, that violence won't solve their problems. Yet, hilariously we support war. Either violence solves everything or violence doesn't. And I think its the latter rather than the former.
 
No.


War isn't pretty. War is bloody, violent, and without rules no matter how many we pretend to put into effect. Sorry, ladies. It is not a place for you.
 
And I have to disagree with this notion. America got itself involved in something that has been happening for centuries. Personally most historic wars I disagree with as well. As said if I could turn back time and go into history. I teach the world how to fight wars with nerdy equivalents to murder. Something that leaves less people broken.
"All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."

You know what triggered World War 1? Archduke Ferdinand getting shot by a Serbian assassin. You know who the Serbian assassin worked for? The Black Hand. (Or, at the very least, TBH had a hand in the operation.) You know why The Black Hand was a thing? Because The Balkan States were an unstable hotbed of violence that fought against the Ottoman Empire for their freedom, only to fight among themselves over which group should take precedence in the countries that formed thereafter. Violence there was so widespread and regular that people simply accepted it as normal and did nothing about it. Every side formed alliances and became more and more hostile toward each other over time until Austrian ambition triggered a war with Serbia that sparked the first world war.

You know what triggered The Crusades? Islamic Jihads that ripped across the medieval world time and again, imposing its rule town after town, country after country, while Europe stood by and did nothing because "it's not our problem." They didn't step up to do anything until The Pope united Christendom to go wage war and shove Islam back from the East, Jerusalem, and the Iberian Peninsula. (It was also a convenient way politically to get the Christians to stop killing each other, but more on that later if you really want to know.)

You know what triggered World War 2? The Nazis steamrolling over Poland and forcing France and Britain to declare war on them... After spending several years rearming unimpeded, breaking every treaty imposed upon them along the way, and having their loud mad shouty leader screech hate filled nonsense over the air waves in a way nobody could pretend they couldn't hear. Meanwhile, in Asia, Japan slowly but surely went from being a single island power to enslaving Korea and several islands into their sphere of influence, with atrocities so insane that they have never again been reflected in human history... Though ISIL is surely trying to best that.

"Not our problem."

So, should we just wait until it becomes our problem, then?

You speak of centuries, but, funny story, I know all about it. I've read the history books. Every time some horrifying destructive force grew, there were plenty of opportunities for us to stop it. We simply chose not to. If Archduke Ferdinand had lived, war might have been avoided, because he had political power and was extremely against the idea of Austria going to war. If the Allies had attacked Germany before she could rearm under Nazi rule, the war would have been over by Christmas and Hitler dead before he could orchestrate the deaths of seven million Jews. If Christians really did care about each other, they could have curbed the growth of Islam before it spread itself far and wide across its borders and forced several brutal, violent wars.

Thing is, war is ugly. War is violent. You don't have winners in the subsequent battles, just survivors... But it is sometimes a sad necessity when evil, violent men rise to power. How many more Syrians have to flee their country before we decide to do something? How many more women raped in ISIL breeding camps? How many more gays flung off rooftops? How many more threats levied at the West? How many more terrorist attacks on subway trains and towers?

Some people want nothing more than to destroy you just because you exist and refuse to capitulate to them. "Teaching" them less violent ways of conducting business won't make them change their minds. You can wish for a more peaceful world all you like, I wish it was more peaceful too. Again, I detest war, but when someone wishes for your death and promises to deliver it to you once they're finished beating your neighbour, do you really stand by and do nothing?

Mankind means more to me than national borders. I just wish it meant more to others too. Then we'd have less wars, ironically.
 
Some people want nothing more than to destroy you just because you exist and refuse to capitulate to them. "Teaching" them less violent ways of conducting business won't make them change their minds. You can wish for a more peaceful world all you like, I wish it was more peaceful too. Again, I detest war, but when someone wishes for your death and promises to deliver it to you once they're finished beating your neighbour, do you really stand by and do nothing?

Mankind means more to me than national borders. I just wish it meant more to others too. Then we'd have less wars, ironically.

I'm a thinker. I am a believer of rational thought and logic. I feel like less war is created bye less extremist viewpoints. I want to believe if humans were more educated and less about who was right and wrong all the time we would have less violence. As for the neighbour situation, clearly I'd call the emergency number. I wouldn't stand around and do nothing, but I also wouldn't get myself involved.
 
I'm a thinker. I am a believer of rational thought and logic. I feel like less war is created bye less extremist viewpoints. I want to believe if humans were more educated and less about who was right and wrong all the time we would have less violence. As for the neighbour situation, clearly I'd call the emergency number. I wouldn't stand around and do nothing, but I also wouldn't get myself involved.
I'm a thinker too. Thing is, some people don't care. They're born brainwashed and hateful and will continue to spread that wherever they go. You also have people who otherwise have ordinary and good lives in the West defecting and joining terrorist operations in the middle east, so it's not like merely being exposed to logic suddenly stops people from committing violent acts. Also, how do you go about spreading logic in a theocratic dictatorship, anyway?

The neighbours are a metaphor. If you're calling the emergency number, you're asking the police to intervene, potentially to put down the violent house invader with force if necessary. Just like how I'm asking the military to intervene to stop gays being thrown off rooftops.

Whether or not that military has women in it. Does anyone have some delicious statistical data on countries which do allow women to serve in front line combat? *Veers vehicle back on the road*
 
The neighbours are a metaphor. If you're calling the emergency number, you're asking the police to intervene, potentially to put down the violent house invader with force if necessary. Just like how I'm asking the military to intervene to stop gays being thrown off rooftops.
*veers a little offer one more time*

I disagree. The military and the police are not the same thing. And there are ways police handles situations without force. I do not believe in needless senseless violence based on extemist point of views.

I also do not believe in an industry that breaks the mental will of another human being. Spits them back out into the normal world and then does nothing to assist them when they can not function in society any more. I know some veteran homeless people, so.......

I cannot. Will not. Support a system of breaking people. And then does not take care of their own. And beyond that. I do not agree with extremist points of views. And I do not agree that military is one hundred percent the way to fix problems.

And with that said I digress no further.
 
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I also do not believe in an industry that breaks the mental will of another human being. Spits them back out into the normal world and then does nothing to assist them when they can not function in society any more. I know some veteran homeless people, so.......

I cannot. Will not. Support a system of breaking people. And then does not take care of their own. And beyond that. I do not agree with extremist points of views. And I do not agree that military is one hundred percent the way to fix problems.
I doubt you'll find any soldier that disagrees with how badly we treat veterans. I certainly don't. It's something the West in general needs to do better, though especially the US & Canada.

As for "breaking the mental will" I think you've seen too many Hollywood war movies about Vietnam. @Dervish and @Cpt Toellner are both soldiers, both with fully intact wills, who enjoy life. It's true that boot camp is brutally hard, but it's because it's supposed to mold your body and mind to be ready for the sheer shock and horrors of war. There is nothing worse than war, so no surprise, the training regiments for it focus on hardcore discipline so that, when you have a rifle in your hands, you don't flinch. Your enemy won't.

Seriously, go out and have a beer with a soldier sometime and ask him (or her!) some questions about the service. They're people just like you and me, not broken at all. Just with a terrible burden on their shoulders.
And with that said I digress no further.
Good to have this talk. Thank you for engaging me so civilly, it's pleasant. You've proven to have a tempered mind this day. If you'd like, I'll let you have the last reply here before we shove this back on topic to women in combat.

LAHdance1.gif
 
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Seriously, go out and have a beer with a soldier sometime and ask him (or her!) some questions about the service. They're people just like you and me, not broken at all. Just with

I live in Colorado Springs, which is a heavy military state. And to be frank, I have spoken with soldier. My perception of soldiers has little to do with Hollywood perception and what I have seen of some soldiers in the United States. Most military people actually make me very uncomfortable and nervous. I know some good military people as well, so don't get me wrong when I say this. There are the few that I meet though.

Something in their eyes and expression I don't like at all. I met a few people who look empty or stare with this vacant expression and I cannot see anything behind their thought process. Those people to me are not alive.
 
Does anyone have some delicious statistical data on countries which do allow women to serve in front line combat?
I've not ever come across any real hard data, but I do know that both the US Army and Marines conducted studies.

A basic Summery:

1- All female units were 2x more likely to get injured.
2- All female units moved slower than their all male counter parts.
3- Mix units containing at least 1 or 2 females, still resulted in female solider being 2x more likely to be injured and slowed the unit. Female soldiers often required help to get over obstacles due to the inability to handle the obstacles and weight of gear.

So really, the number of females that perform on the same level as a male-- educated guess will be less than 1% of the total employed Females in the US Armed Forces.
 
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I had a nice comprehensive reply, but Brovo beat me to it with all the points I was going to make I am too mentally damaged and emotionally vacant while being too busy not being alive to have the ability to do anything other than field strip a C9, reassemble it, and destroy the enemies of the state with extreme prejudice with 200 rounds of 5.56 ball, which thankfully didn't take up too much of my morning.
 
I've not ever come across any real hard data, but I do know that both the US Army and Marines conducted studies.

A basic Summery:

1- All female units were 2x more likely to get injured.
2- All female units moved slower than their all male counter parts.
3- Mix units containing at least 1 or 2 females, still resulted in female solider being 2x more likely to be injured and slowed the unit. Female soldiers often required help to get over obstacles due to the inability to handle the obstacles and weight of gear.

So really, the number of females that perform on the same level as a male-- educated guess will be less than 1% of the total employed Females in the US Armed Forces.
Sources? Dates?

The most recent data I currently have on gender differences in key performance indicators for non-infantry military service comes from this special report¹, and its results along with anecdotal evidence lead me to believe studies finding a correlation between gender and probability of injury fail to control for important factors which could include general stress (which women have, historically, unfairly had much more in military professions), training, trust from their peers, experience, etc. - and let's not forget that the standards of acceptance and training for all-female units and female recruits have been, historically, lower than for men in most militaries.

There are also a multitude of selection effects that may or may not occur, such as stronger women leaving the military more frequently due to the rampant sexual harassment (they don't take no shit), weaker men leaving the military more easily due to the abundance of strong male candidates, stronger women self-selection (or being selected by some external force) away from the units where these studies apply and not having enough of them left in lower positions to reflect properly in studies, etc.

It's nice and all to say that females are twice as likely to get injured. Define injured, specify study parameters, control for selection effects, control for common causes - otherwise, you might as well say that untrained women with no weapons are twice as likely to get injured while fighting jihadists in Iran as trained men fighting from vehicles in a south african peace-keeping operation. True, and completely uninformative.
 
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The most recent data I currently have on gender differences in key performance indicators for non-infantry military service comes from this special report¹, and its results along with anecdotal evidence lead me to believe studies finding a correlation between gender and probability of injury fail to control for important factors which could include general stress (which women have, historically, unfairly had much more in military professions), training, trust from their peers, experience, etc. - and let's not forget that the standards of acceptance and training for all-female units and female recruits have been, historically, lower than for men in most militaries.

There are also a multitude of selection effects that may or may not occur, such as stronger women leaving the military more frequently due to the rampant sexual harassment (they don't take no shit), weaker men leaving the military more easily due to the abundance of strong male candidates, stronger women self-selection (or being selected by some external force) away from the units where these studies apply and not having enough of them left in lower positions to reflect properly in studies, etc.

It's nice and all to say that females are twice as likely to get injured. Define injured, specify study parameters, control for selection effects, control for common causes - otherwise, you might as well say that untrained women with no weapons are twice as likely to get injured while fighting jihadists in Iran as trained men fighting from vehicles in a south african peace-keeping operation. True, and completely uninformative.
Here

While neither the Army or Marines have released Hard statically data (Already stated in my previous post-- They have not released what kind of injuries substantiated, how often, or under what combat circumstances.) So I can't offer anything beyond what they have released to the public. You have to take it all in perspective. However, being a former military service Female, most injuries that I've personally not only sustained, (and other women often sustain) Hip/pelvic, Ankle/knee/shoulder injuries.

They also don't include how many women preform ON PAR with men or how many of them are set back in all female units with females that cannot.

So there's a ton of 'number' data that's missing.

(Again, it was in my previous post there was no hard data)
I've not ever come across any real hard data, but I do know that both the US Army and Marines conducted studies.
(Here it is again)
 
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@Silent @Qwertronix So, from that report...

STRESS FRACTURES IN INITIAL ENTRY TRAINING

Women have twice the injury rates of men, including serious time-loss injuries, and half of female recruits sustain musculoskeletal injury in initial entry training in all military services.19–21 Some of the higher injury rates reported for female military trainees are explained by more reliable reporting by women,22 but women are clearly at higher risk for some injuries, such as stress fracture. Stress fracture rates ranged from 5% to 15% in women compared with 1% to 3% in men in the same 8–13-week recruit training, and the fractures in women tend to be more debilitating.

Pelvic and femoral stress fractures accounted for more than half of the stress fractures in women, whereas for men, femoral fractures were uncommon, and pelvic fractures were not observed (#1)​. 19,23–25

Stress fracture has not been well studied outside of the military because it is somewhat unique to the concerted ramp-up in physical activity of recruits, which triggers changes in bone metabolism and fracture vulnerability. The special military prevalence of this debilitating injury made stress fracture prevention a key target of the DWHRP, with an opportunity to benefit all active women. Thousands of female Army, Navy, and Marine.

Comparison of strength performance outcomes for women participating in four different 6-month physical training programs and in a control group with no training (reproduced with permission from ref, 14). The greatest benefits to single maximal repetition (1 RM) of the bench press and squat exercises occurred with total body training programs with low (3–8 RM) or high (8–12 RM) repetition routines compared with training programs focused only on the upper body. Such training studies provide a scientific basis for programs to enhance strength performance of women. Significant changes at p 0.05 are indicated for comparisons to baseline* and 3-month values# and to changes observed in upper body training group@.

Corps recruits were studied prospectively for stress fracture in DWHRP studies, most consistently revealing low aerobic fitness and injury history as risk factors.19,23,26

Bone responses during basic training indicated that young women build bone differently from young men in response to the forces acting on their bodies, with women building bone on the endocortical surface and men responding on the subperiosteal surface. Female trainees who fractured tended to have lower bone mineral density (BMD) compared with female controls(#2)​,23,26 and also smaller diameter bones with thinner cross-cortices, explaining some of the increased risk in terms of bone geometry26 (Fig. 3).

Resistance training produced significantly greater increases in spine and femoral bone density compared with the improvements produced by an aerobic exercise program.27(#3: interesting citation...)​ These observations are central to new studies on biomechanical effects on normal bone in the DoD Bone Health and Military Medical Readiness (BHMMR) research program that targets effective strategies to strengthen bone and eliminate the risk of stress fracture during basic training while also reducing risk of osteoporosis later in life.

Since 1997, this program has expanded on the initial investment in DWHRP stress fracture studies to include $35M in special congressional appropriations funding 40 major projects on bone physiology and stress fracture. The DoD also joined with other federal agencies to update dietary reference intake values, leading to a significant revision of calcium requirements for young women, based primarily on bone health outcomes and considering upper limits of safety. Several identified research gaps are being addressed in the BHMMR program, and the results will translate into practical calcium and vitamin D supplementation guidance for military women (e.g., policy recommendations from the DoD Nutrition Committee; update of Military Dietary Reference Intakes in the joint service regulation on nutritional requirements; and/or inclusion of operational ration supplement packets).


#1: Pelvic fractures being more common in women than men is actually not surprising to me. It's the same reason why women tend to have more sway in their hips when they walk, it's to do with the pelvis having a larger opening to allow room for the birth canal.

#2: Again, not shocking. Lower mineral density = more brittle bones. Eat your vitamins and drink your milk, kids.

#3: So I decided to hunt down some of the citations for this study (because science) and found Citation 27. Here's a bit from that.

"Comparisons between the groups showed that after 12 months, BMD increased similarly in the lumbar spine (2.2% resistance vs. 1.8% aerobics, p = not significant) but more in the resistance group in the femoral neck (5.0% vs. 2.7%, p < 0.001) and the mid radius (7.8% vs. 6.7%, p < 0.05). Both resistance and aerobic exercises increase regional bone mass, particularly cortical bone mass, in premenopausal women. Resistance work appears to have a slightly greater effect on cortical bone than aerobics alone. A combination of aerobics and resistance exercises, therefore, may be a useful strategy for increasing peak bone mass in premenopausal women."

Note that after twelve months, the total resultant increase in bone mass no matter the type of work out was still under 10%. This is important to note, because in this scientific study comparing the bone density differences between males and females...

"The aims of this study were to examine gender differences in bone mass (BMC), areal BMD (aBMD), volumetric BMD (vBMD) by comparing twins of opposite sex in whom the effects of age, genes and environment are partially controlled for. DEXA derived BMC, aBMD, vBMD at the third lumbar vertebra (L3), femoral neck (FN) and forearm (1/3 radius) were compared between 82 opposite sex pairs aged 18-80. BMC was significantly higher in males at all three sites (26-45.5%). For aBMD the gender differences remained significant at all sites except the spine."

Well shit. Even if you get an ideal 10% increase, you're still shy another 10-30% to hit the same values as males. Granted, female skeletons are generally smaller (because females are generally smaller--don't blame me, blame mother nature, she's a cunt) so you may not quite need bone mineral density to match up to males. Further studies will likely reveal if said aerobic & resistance exercises will reduce the level of injuries sustained during boot camp. In addition, further hard data needs to be gathered on battlefield soldiers post boot camp.

tl;dr: Don't expect science to totally solve this one for you, it doesn't have all the information it needs yet. It's still probably gonna take a few more years to figure this out. In the meantime, the only way we'll know about female effectiveness or deficiencies on the front line will be to put women there in the first place, in some capacity.

Now if y'all article linkin' folks will excuse me, I'm gonna go make myself some soup.

EDIT

About science...

 
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