Women will enter all United States Army, Marines and British Army combat units from 2016

[Cyclops]

If women pass the physical, they should be let in. The subject has been raked over in previous posts. Its clear very few women will qualify for special forces but for many combat roles there will be a cohort of suitable physical specimens.

Women will experience harassment as surely as night follows day. Bands of young men in a military (or any social environment) placed under stress and bastardised by militarisation will practice exclusion, violence and other "bullying" behaviours. This actually seems to makes better soldiers, the survivors cohere into tighter teams, individuality is supressed in favour of predictable responses etc.

The elite sports comparison is inapposite, we need warm bodies on the ground and we've been excluding over half the population because of Victorian anxiety about "the ladies".

As for rape concerns, a mate of mine in the ADF was given a briefing on rape when he arrived in Iraq. I will spoiler it as its a bit rough.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Basically he was told if he was captured by insurgents in Iraq he would most likely be raped, and that this is fairly normal in a Middle Eastern context. He was told many men who are raped experience involuntary erection and ejaculation due to prostate stimulation, and he might want to consider preparing mental coping strategies if this occurred.

From my historical studies this appears to be a not uncommon practice in the Middle East. Burton notes that camel thieves were raped as a punishment by caravan drivers, and there are other notes buy travellers IIRC (Doughty maybe or the French fella) mentioning casual punitive rape of men.

Rape is a part of war and happens to men and women. US forces at Abu Graib engaged in sexualised humiliation of prisoners, and I would guess the US defence forces would be one of the more humane and disciplined forces in the world.

Yes women soldiers will be raped as male soldiers are by colleagues and more often the enemy. Some will be shot, some will be bullied (probably at a higher rate than male colleagues as they make up a smaller group, and for reasons of social inequality in the communities recruits are drawn from-"make me a sammich" etc) and many will die. That's what happens to soldiers.

If women are an equal part of your political community they have equal obligations (and should have equal opportunities) to defend it, subject to suitability to the role.

[Col. Tartleton]

Women should be forced to serve and men barred from serving until the casualty figures equalize.

Other than not going to jail I can't say I'm happy about being subject to selective service.

We need an all female military. That would solve most of the problems about mixed units.

[mrmouth]

If women pass the physical, they should be let in.

These physicals don't put you in situations where physiological differences will arise. Not even Ranger school will address some of this adequately. These are long-term issues and we are using short-term experiments.

We saw epidemic levels of joint, bone, and ligament injury, with respect to the amount of weight that we are expected to carry now. It is not uncommon for a grown man who weighs over 200 lbs, to weigh upwards of 300 lbs when fully loaded for extended operations in the middle of nowhere. The amount of injury associated with that has real consequences and women have less bone density and suffer these exact injuries more. War is a game of numbers. Whenever you cannot bring to bear, and then maintain those numbers, you have problems. And of course there is the issue of responding to your battle buddy being incapacitated and needing to drag him out of the fire.

Not to mention that we had actual, real-world experiments with women attached to Marine infantry units in Afghanistan and it was less than ideal. Males had to carry their gear when they could no longer carry it. And as expected, based on science, females had more issues dealing with the extreme summer heat. Not to mention they were in a complete patriarchal society that more closely resembled 300 BC, where they were openly disliked even by women and children that they were supposed to connect with. Not their problem, but a reality.


There are roles for women in combat, but not infantry as we know it today. They serve in the top-tier counter terrorism forces in many countries, and excel. Earning your way into those units means you don't have to do the crap that infantry does. Women have better analytical minds than men. They make excellent designated marksmen and snipers. But grunts are called grunts for a reason. It's gruelling work that more often resembles that of a laborer than a warfighter. I just don't see women keeping up, and I see standards falling.

In this overly PC society I dont know if we will even be able to accept that reality when it happens.

[Sint]

We need an all female military. That would solve most of the problems about mixed units.

Fun unless you're at war with other countries with male units.

[Col. Tartleton]

Fun unless you're at war with other countries with male units.

Attrition. We'll still win. Everyone elite is smaller than us and everyone bigger than us is crappy.

[Mithridate]

There are roles for women in combat, but not infantry as we know it today. They serve in the top-tier counter terrorism forces in many countries, and excel. Earning your way into those units means you don't have to do the crap that infantry does. Women have better analytical minds than men. They make excellent designated marksmen and snipers. But grunts are called grunts for a reason. It's gruelling work that more often resembles that of a construction worker than a warfighter.

This, so much this. All of my goddamn this.

I just don't see women keeping up, and I see standards falling. In this overly PC society I dont know if we will even be able to accept that reality when it happens.

I agree with the Swede.

We are at the point that we even have different standards for the genders, lower ones for females applying to the police ( same militarily afaik ). Aside having actual rules saying if you have two people with the same/very similar merits, you must choose the one of whatever group of which there are less of. ( positive discrimination it's called ). As well as quotation goals.

There has been a number of lawsuits lately over obvious discrimination of men with far superior merits, just to get in females in the fire dept, police and military respectively.

Speaking of crazy PC btw, I was just recently shouted out of a LBGT group as a raging, evil transphobe for saying I wanted help to be available ( and recommending it ) for people with gender dysphoria and dreamed of it one day being "cured". Despite me bending over backwards to be polite and having underlined that being transgender was 100% fine and not what I was talking about and that treatment/therapy/surgery/help/whatever entirely voluntary.

Mental gymnastics said I was just some ciss prick advocating torture and distressing them and saying evil things I was not at all saying.
A lot of people leading these goddamn movements are insane and it's getting worse - I say that as a raging leftist liberal.

In my ideal world they would draft tumblerinas. We all win that way.

You know, even the crazy people dump on tumblr

[Caligula's_Horse]

These physicals don't put you in situations where physiological differences will arise. Not even Ranger school will address some of this adequately. These are long-term issues and we are using short-term experiments...

That could be easily circumvented by turning long term pack muling into part of the acceptance standards.
I know that at least where I come from, grunts running about with their own weight on their shoulders for days at a time is something that comes up in screening for elite units, and for units that don't get screenings, in the first couple of weeks of boot camp. It weeds out a lot of the smaller framed men, and if it was extended for women, would probably only keep the more robustly built among them, which is reasonable seeing as that's what a screening is supposed to do.

[Cyclops]

... I just don't see women keeping up, and I see standards falling.

Fair enough. I'd note if US and UK forces have resorting to hiring women despite the anxiety that provokes then they have a shortage of bodies. Standards have slipped. Not all of them are good standards. Hopefully consistent standards will be applied.

I would hope all recruits regardless of physical/perceived/self identified gender would be subjected to the same physical tests and standards that produce an effective military. If as you say (and it makes perfect sense fwiw from my ignorant position) women tend to be physically and psychologically suited to pew pew rather than grunt then the selection and assessment should put them there. If not then maybe they're already sending the wrong men to the grunts as well.

You're right that they have to get the selection right, and can we assume that?

... In this overly PC society I dont know if we will even be able to accept that reality when it happens.

It will get very ugly for all forces involved at some point, as soldiers tend to die in horrible ways. People's attitudes will be tested hard.

The politicians are sensitive to soundbites and ugly headlines "they sent her to be raped and killed" would end a minister's or secretary's career pretty quick. Many members of the public could be relied upon not to accept the reality of soldiers being killed because the soldier was a woman.

I guess the armed forces in my country have been politicised to a greater degree than in the past. Previously ugly was let go because the forces remained a sharp tool and "boys will be boys". With the inclusion of women and honest reporting the amount of bullying (or stuff extremely like it) required to produce a grunt became public, as did the sort of behaviour young males forced through a cooker cutter that makes them able to kill and willing to be killed tend to exhibit.

The politician's reaction was strong as was the head of the ADF's. They put a (experienced and well qualified) tranny in a senior position as part of a big reform (a senior woman was OK so long as she'd had a penis at some point but srsly it was a gutsy move) and repeatedly blasted the behaviour people hadn't liked. Hopefully they have put a stop to the series of rapes of female cadets by a small number of officers: there were strong indications of cover-ups in favour of force solidarity in that past. In a perverse way if they wanted an effective army that involved the least work-investigations would disrupt cohesion.

One of the objectionable behaviours IIRC was a "Jedi Council" of young cadets (all male) videoing themselves having consensual sex with fellow cadets (all female). I can't see how that can be stopped completely.

The first problem with that is officially they shouldn't be having sex but several thousand young adult co-eds doing hard yards with a hard drinking culture is hardly conducive to celibacy. There's just zero chance of the drinking culture being tackled (it actually has a big role in team bonding as well as in wider Australian culture, although less than in the past). If they want to segregate the units I think it'll just push the problems that appear in boot camp down the line when the men and women operate together in the field, plus it will divide a force based on unity and trust.

In the second place disrespect of a fellow services member is pretty serious, but its also extremely common. Teams within teams, elite units, inter service rivalry are all part of the armed forces. Normative processes are applied to cadets, and differences humiliated in the effort to build reliable predictable combat units. The double X chromosome is a pretty big difference, and given the small historical number of women they're behind the 8 ball getting accepted as a normal type.

We'll have sparks coming out of the ADF for decades because women are coming into the system. I doubt they will be given a completely fair chance and because of that undeserving women will probably be pushed through as a bureaucratic solution by idiot politicians.


Including women in the armed forces at all exposes the force to stress. It already has in my country and it will more in the future. Some of the stress is self inflicted and even unnecessary but its understandable: some of it is structural and inevitable. On the one hand you have politicians and commanders playing a political game (to be fair its to support justice, but they're politicians so it seems slimy). On the other hand you have a well developed system that produces good soldiers and that will by its nature chew up a lot of women until...well maybe forever, and certainly at least until the current generation of entrenched career officers are retired.

Its a hard job and we will lose some force effectiveness I daresay, and make a lot of mistakes before we get it right.

[Phier]

Fair enough. I'd note if US and UK forces have resorting to hiring women despite the anxiety that provokes then they have a shortage of bodies.

What makes you think this has anything to do with recruitment needs?

[Cyclops]

What makes you think this has anything to do with recruitment needs?

I imagine its being imposed by politicians with a sense of social justice. Its a fundamentally fair thing we are doing, giving people access to opportunities. Our societies aspire to freedom of opportunity, it remains to be seen if it is the death of us.

However I know the extremely conservative armed forces in my country have resisted these moves, and would have resisted harder if it weren't for problems filling the ranks.

Does the US have any problems finding suitable recruits? I imagine they do. I think pragmatic considerations have made this aspirational move easier to swallow.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ipti/?page=all

More than two thirds of applicants are not suitable. One third are too fat. The Air Force needs more drone pilots. The Army reserve needs people with less visible tattoos. It looks like there is the usual shortage of bodies for various reasons (eg more jobs now the US economy is growing). So unless you go Sipho Dyas (and I believe Cheney looked into it-no proof mind you, I just believe it) letting women into more roles makes sense and serves a freedom agenda too.

You do like freedom, don't you?

[ABH2]

The notion that males are too fat and don't qualify is in general bull pushed by warhawks. I went to basic with dudes who were overweight. The fat melts off by the time it ends. Whether they keep it off is a different matter, but even skinny young guys can gain weight as they age. Most do. Meanwhile, the American military is currently downsizing and kicked out a lot of individuals. Women are not needed in combat as warm bodies.

I object to people who have never served a day in their life and who know nothing of what a combat unit is like making these decisions. There aren't going to be many women in these combat units, the ones who do end up in them will receive special treatment. Beyond the issues that arise on missions mentioned above, there's the simple problems of accommodations. I guess we'll give the one female in the infantry company their own sleeping quarters like they are a commander...Everyone else in the platoon can go out of their way to make sure they're comfortable. How about all the times when you need your guys together because something may come down the pipeline, like you're on QRF? Those minor inconveniences add up.

PT is a huge part of getting promoted. Lower PT qualifications already means its easier for females to get promoted. Who runs PT in the platoons? The NCO's - the ones who are supposed to set the standard themselves. Let's exasperate what is already an issue...

People keep saying if they don't lower the standards, but the military has already shown they will lower the standards. It's bad to have story after story about women failing to qualify for these jobs. It's not hypothetical at this point. They've already started the implementation and are strongly considering carving out gender exceptions to the 'screening' process.

What people in this thread have called a sexist or backwards boys club is a huge part of unit cohesion. Being in the military, it doesn't take long to notice there's a difference between the support and combat MOS's in culture. The units are different, the mentalities are different. It's going to lead to constant policing of language, it WILL lead to drama (this is just a fact of life in a pog unit). When you meat a female who talks about how she slept her way through her entire platoon while in the service, or hear/see horror stories about the stupidity that occurs in mixed units routinely, you will have pause when some PC nutter starts telling you how these are just stereotypes. Some people don't like to hear it, but there are women who intentionally get pregnant to avoid doing things they don't want to do like deploy. A female getting pregnant is a good half a year or more where she's completely incapable of doing what is going to be asked of her in most support jobs let alone in a line platoon. So, the military which has invested thousands in this individual is going to lose a good chunk of a contract when they get pregnant. A unit is going to be shorthanded that entire time. Take a tanker platoon that has only 17 individuals when its at full strength. Of that, you're talking probably a handful of guys to get tasked out on details. Who is picking up that slack when she's busy in a soft shoe profile doing nothing? I mean, most of the time an E1-E4 is doing physical labor that most females won't be selected for.

The military is not a democracy. You do not have rights in the military. This is not the same as desegregation.

[Enros]

I object to people who have never served a day in their life and who know nothing of what a combat unit is like making these decisions.

We don't let bankers, politicians, lawyers, police or chemical companies make their own rules. Why should we let the military. The US military making its rules resulted in the massacre of refugees in Korea and body counts and defoliants in Vietnam. Only in recent decades since Americans took a more active interest in what their military does has it started taking measures to prevent civilian casualties. In 2015 the US military is no longer capable of machine gunning entire columns of refugees, and that's because so many ordinary citizens demand their politicians control it.

What you've just said is also an exact rehash of the opposition to a racially integrated military an gays in the military. This is the third time we've been through this.

[Cope]

What you've just said is also an exact rehash of the opposition to a racially integrated military an gays in the military. This is the third time we've been through this.

Personally I see no meaningful reason why women should be denied access to front lines provided that they are capable of passing the same mental and physical exams that the men do. Clearly there are plenty of women who can and have done this already, so there should be no cause for the military to shift the goal posts of the assessment, though it is fairly likely that they will (as they already have for other units that do accept women). I wouldn't expect or request the authorities to relax the examination criteria for males due to their under representation at universities in the West, and I wouldn't want that for the military either.

[fkizz]

In my ideal world they would draft tumblerinas. We all win that way.

Women should be forced to serve and men barred from serving until the casualty figures equalize.

And that's the third one. Great minds make similiar remarks.

[ABH2]

Only, this isn't a game. Not only are the mundane tasks going to become harder, but people can die in the military when someone can't do their job right. The American military is already asked to serve as the world's police force by the same people who want to cut its budget.

We don't let bankers, politicians, lawyers, police or chemical companies make their own rules. Why should we let the military. The US military making its rules resulted in the massacre of refugees in Korea and body counts and defoliants in Vietnam. Only in recent decades since Americans took a more active interest in what their military does has it started taking measures to prevent civilian casualties. In 2015 the US military is no longer capable of machine gunning entire columns of refugees, and that's because so many ordinary citizens demand their politicians control it.

The US military wasn't making its own rules at any point in time, let alone in Korea or Vietnam. The argument that nothing was done to prevent civilian casualties is absurd in every sense of the word. Find me a military that did a better job of it at any point in time, and you may have an argument. In the mean time, the majority of twentieth century wars were started by progressive politicians who were well aware of what was happening on the ground.

What you've just said is also an exact rehash of the opposition to a racially integrated military an gays in the military. This is the third time we've been through this.

Yes, because now that it's been decreed that gays can openly serve, they do just that, right? You know so many gays in the American military that you can speak firsthand on the matter. I, in fact, do know gay service members. Not one came out to their unit and served openly. But you're such an enlightened expert on the matter. The issues with gays are theoretical and flimsy. Those based on gender are not despite your attempts to draw false equivalencies.

[Slydessertfox]

We don't let bankers, politicians, lawyers, police or chemical companies make their own rules. Why should we let the military. The US military making its rules resulted in the massacre of refugees in Korea and body counts and defoliants in Vietnam. Only in recent decades since Americans took a more active interest in what their military does has it started taking measures to prevent civilian casualties. In 2015 the US military is no longer capable of machine gunning entire columns of refugees, and that's because so many ordinary citizens demand their politicians control it.

What you've just said is also an exact rehash of the opposition to a racially integrated military an gays in the military. This is the third time we've been through this.

This more or less.

[Gäiten]

Next step will be to get rid off guns as phallocratic symbols. New transgender-conform design ...

[Phier]

Coincidentally I know a future ranger who's contract is being held up because they need to open slots for women. I'm sure they will be just as good as this top recruit from a class of 160 males.....

[Blastoise Groudon]

I don't understand what the big deal is. If a woman wants to fight, let her fight. Furthermore, if a major war ever happens, I expect a woman to be able to fight along side a man to help defend her nation.

[Dr. Croccer]

Probably not the best idea. Obviously the physical differences are one thing, but in my opinion possible effects on unit cohesion and esprit de corps are far more troublesome. It seems to me that the introduction of a sexual element in the stressful, socially confined and hierarchical conditions of a military unit can destabilize morale and discipline purely due to human nature.

Then again, the only times I shot a gun in my life was at clay and sometimes real pigeons, so what do I know.