Men are better than women in combat

[ignoramus]

Naps, I wonder what % of private females in the US are registered gun owners? 10% 20%

What's that got to do with the price of milk?

Your same argument about women not having an interest in certain sports.
Is it just culturally acceptable for woman to own and carry guns as it is for men?
Or is it thought of more as a men's thing? hence less interest in guns in general.

[SmootherPebble]

I actually recently read that women conceal carry at a higher rate than men do in America... and it's something like half of all female gun owners, which is actually still fairly high.

[Napoléon]

---

Is it a cultural thing? Women aren't good at darts because they don't spend so much time in a pub practicing?

Pretty much.

Think about it, playing darts isn't considered a very "womanly" thing to do. Same with MMA. Or Racing. Or Football. Like, are we really surprised that women aren't competing in these things at the same level as men do, when there isn't the same societal encouragement to get into these sports?

Or we could take the incredibly simplistic view that it's all just down to physical capability.

None of this has all that much to do with the OP though.

---

Just further to this, how many blokes do we ever see playing netball, or on the world championship netball teams.

[Aractus]

However I would note that if women were capable of competing in physical sports directly against men that they would do so.

Do you honestly think that the reason they don't already is entirely down to physical prowess? I think there's more to it than that.

No, it's an observation. It's probably got to do with 200,000 - 300,000 years of the men being the "hunters" before present.

[Napoléon]

No, it's an observation. It's probably got to do with 200,000 - 300,000 years of the men being the "hunters" before present.

If you say so, seems a little different to what you stated earlier:

it's obvious that "men are better than women in combat" - why else can't women compete equitable against men in sports?

[Aractus]

Both are derived from observational evidence Nap. My last post is more speculation about the nature of the paradigm than providing further evidence.

[Clueless Morgan]

As far as I'm aware, the women who passed the Army rangers test went through the same test as the men. It sort of makes your whole argument void.

Of course there are women who can do it, but they are few and far between. 

The fact is that women aren't held to the same standards as men, by a long shot, when it comes to the general military. I won't have so much of an issue if they tested the individual instead of the gender, and tested for specific roles... some of which might be more advantageous for women.

When the news broke about the two women who passed the ranger training, there was a piece written by a female Marine (that I now can't find   ) discussing the inequality of female standards and how that is potentially contributing to the number of injuries that women receive during the training leading to them washing out.  She (the article author) suggested that if women's baseline standards weren't dumbed down because they're guuuUUUuuurlz and if they were given sufficient time to train to meet those baseline standards, more women might be physically able to endure the training requirements of groups like the rangers.

I read that the American military were finding women in the army increasingly useful because of a lot of action went on behind the front lines with insurgency. So even though the female soldiers were not on the front line they still ended up in combat. And in Islamic states a lot of women won't talk to men who are not family.

Exactly.  Women have a vital role to play in warfare.

Ashley's War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
http://www.amazon.com/Ashleys-War-Soldie...ey%27s+war

In 2010, the Army created Cultural Support Teams, a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The Army reasoned that women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams: accompanying their male colleagues on raids and, while those soldiers were searching for insurgents, questioning the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives living at the compound. Their presence had a calming effect on enemy households, but more importantly, the CSTs were able to search adult women for weapons and gather crucial intelligence. They could build relationships—woman to woman—in ways that male soldiers in an Islamic country never could.

The question for me isn't whether women should or shouldn't be allowed in combat situations, it's how best to prepare them to meet the demands of combat when they find themselves in those situations.  It might be that all-women combat teams needs to be set up.  It may be that women require a longer span of training to get their bodies into the required physical condition.  I don't know the solution, but wholesale banning them is, I think, short-sighted.  Women in the military will find themselves in combat situations so the military needs to find the best way to train them so they're ready.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

It might be better-phrased like this:

Women tend, on the average, to not be as "into" sports and other forms of physical fitness as men, and they tend not to pursue skillsets that are most useful in the Combat Arms military career paths. This has a lot to do with both cultural gender roles and with an evolutionary heritage of hunter-gatherer tribalism in which men were hunters and warriors (leading to sexual dimorphism). As a result, while perhaps 5% of the male population is qualified for the top levels of military frontline combat roles, only about 1% of women are similarly qualified (making those numbers up, for effect/example), and combat training should be rigorous and equal, so that it is ensured that all meet the standards.

Because of the physical disparities overall, a higher number of women by percent will wash out of the training. This is okay with all involved, since it means that those who do graduate the programs will be the sort of elites needed for combat. It is to the advantage of the nation to have members in the Combat Arms career path who come from different backgrounds, who think in different ways, and who have a range of physical abilities and skills which can be integrated into an effective combat team. Elite female warriors may be rare, by numerical comparison to their male comrades, but they bring combat capabilities to the team which the men cannot, in the modern style of warfare, particular in conflict areas of the 21st century where the social structure of the nations being occupied prohibit men from interacting with women as sources of potential intel or to search for weapons.

Finally, given the documented problem "rape culture" of the military, it can only improve our fighting capabilities overall if women are seen as full warriors, even in potentiam, by their fellow soldiers, rather than a sort of "second-class citizen" to whom certain military jobs are prohibited. Such a reduction in assaults and change in the way women are viewed will not only lead to fewer losses of trained and capable female soldiers, it will draw in the very kind of women who comprise that 1%, where they would currently choose to avoid going into a career where they had limited options and high danger because they are seen as limited in capacity.

By limiting female soldiers to assigned roles, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and harming our combat capabilities, not helping them.

[SmootherPebble]

Here's a reply from a friend of mine who was on the front line in the Army in Afghanistan for 3 years:


I did 3 years in a line unit so I can chime in here. I'll start by saying that women should be allowed to apply for these positions if they can meet the requirements of those units. In the army, and I assume the Marines are the same way, your unit can set the fitness and readiness standard above what the branch requires. In my unit you had to meet 70% minimum in every category of the apft just to avoid getting chaptered out. 80% if you didn't want to do pt 2x a day plus other remedial pt throughout the day. As it was in 2010 before I got out 80% of the men's standard was well over 100% for women. There's a common knowledge in the services, that I feel is justified, that women aren't as well respected as their male peers due to the lower standards they have to meet. If women want to serve in line units they should be held to the same standards.

As for the psychological aspect a women shouldn't be held to a different standard either. We would do these ridiculous 12-20mile ruck marches ending in a live fire combat simulation. Our bags would usually be weighing 75-125lbs depending on your role in the unit plus the 40-50lbs of armor plates, extra front loaded ammo and radios. The guys who couldn't hang were always moved to a HQ unit or some place else equally as terrible. I used to think those exercises were ridiculous until we walked 7k ft up a mountain with those weight loads and immediately took RPG and mortar fire once we hit the summit. We didn't sleep for ~2days. Then we did the same thing a week later. When you're deployed that stuff can be constant.

What I'm saying is that the standards exist for a reason. Everyone does basic training so everyone knows how to hold a rifle and take care of it. After that there isn't a gradual warming up period when you get to a combat unit - its 100% from day one. If they can't do it then they can't do it. That's the truth. I'd expect a man to get the same treatment.

I can say that 90% of the men in those units wouldn't have a problem with women being brought in. At the end of the day nobody cares what sex you are so long as you can carry your weight, not crack under pressure and are able to throw the heaviest member of your unit on your back and carry them off a battlefield.

[Napoléon]

Because of the physical disparities overall, a higher number of women by percent will wash out of the training. This is okay with all involved, since it means that those who do graduate the programs will be the sort of elites needed for combat. It is to the advantage of the nation to have members in the Combat Arms career path who come from different backgrounds, who think in different ways, and who have a range of physical abilities and skills which can be integrated into an effective combat team. Elite female warriors may be rare, by numerical comparison to their male comrades, but they bring combat capabilities to the team which the men cannot, in the modern style of warfare, particular in conflict areas of the 21st century where the social structure of the nations being occupied prohibit men from interacting with women as sources of potential intel or to search for weapons.

I'm gonna point out a seeming contradiction here, and I may well be wrong.

How is it in one breath you are okay to say gender is not an issue, that people and their attributes are unique, the military should treat people as indivuals and assess them as such. But in another "women have combat capabilities that men do not"?

What are these capabilities besides a seemingly vague and/or relatively rare social scenario where 'men can't interact with women'?

I dont disagree with anything you said, but I'm not sure what exactly the point is in saying women bring things to the table that men can't, and in the same breath saying the judgement/requirements for them being there shouldn't actually have anything to do with that anyway.