Estrogen and danger

[CrashbotUS]

If a female could do they job I did in the Army, good on her. I think you'll find a pretty even divide among people who have actually served in combat arms jobs when it comes to women filling those positions. Some of resistance comes from a perceived notion that women in the military get special treatment simply because they are female (lower pt standards, less field time, etc). 

[Toxn]

If a female could do they job I did in the Army, good on her. I think you'll find a pretty even divide among people who have actually served in combat arms jobs when it comes to women filling those positions. Some of resistance comes from a perceived notion that women in the military get special treatment simply because they are female (lower pt standards, less field time, etc).

Which is the thing that nobody wants and everyone is sure will happen anyway.

Although look at some of my previous posts for the argument that standards themselves are not exactly designed only with the task in mind.

So I guess another question is: what standards are indisputably necessary for the role?

[CrashbotUS]

The APFT has absolutely nothing  to do with a soldiers ability to perform a given task. It's nothing more than an indicator of general physical fitness.  The standards would really need to be MOS specific and to drill that  down even further, specific to the  type of unit you are working in. 

 

A box mover or paper filer does not need to meet the same physical requirements as a cannon crewman or a rifleman. 

 

 

A good example would be what I did. I was a forward observer and worked within light, airborne, and mechanized units during my career. With a full combat load in a light/airborne unit, I HAD to be able to carry well over 100lb of gear and I had to be able to do this consistently, quickly, and over long distances. There is obviously a certain level of strength, conditioning, and overall physical fitness required to do that. On the other hand, when I was mechanized I carried far less equipment because we had a vehicle. If I did have to dismount our vehicle, the amounts of gear and the distance required to carry them would be both less and shorter.

 

The regular old PT test we did was not an indicator of my ability to do any of that. 

[Sturgeon]

I'm necroing this thread because 1) dabbling in the necromantic arts is entirely within the purview of a decadent princeling and 2) I had a thought about this and (may) have something coherent to add.

 

So, here is my thought:

 

Firstly, one of the remarkable aspects of modern society is that it has significantly reduced the rate at which women die in pregnancy and childbirth. Now, apparently the old "20-40% of women used to die in childbirth" thing is more an artefact of the 1800s than anything like a solid historical trend, but I'll happily accept that a rate of something like 10% overall (ie: better than some countries today) was relatively normal. This means that 10% of your adult males of fighting age were (historically) sitting without a mate.

 

Secondly, it is pretty common cause amongst the vast majority of people that stable, long-term relationships between partners (historically almost exclusively some combination of men + women) are beneficial for the functioning of a society. I'd also accept the argument that the most stable form of partnership is between two people rather than multiples, for the simple reason that property rights and succession (which are already a godawful mess to work out) are easier to work out than in a group arrangement of any sort. I have direct experience with this, as South Africa recognises polygamous marriages in the form of traditional marriage. Said marriages come with a fairly intricate system of property rights based on the concepts of independent households run by the wives, with the husband acting as an administrator.

 

Thirdly, it is pretty unequivocal that people in developed societies (and, increasingly, developing ones) are not having kids at the rate at which they could. My grandfather, for instance, was one of eight children. My mother was one of four. I was one of three siblings, and my child is likely to be either alone or one of two (if we follow the current trend). It is also pretty obvious that this is a social and economic issue rather than a biological one. Couples are waiting longer and longer to have kids, because the cost of living is rising, and the earning power of the parents is falling and heavily dependant on education level (which takes time).

 

Finally, it should be common cause for the more conservative folk that marriages as an institution; in whatever form they currently occupy; should be preserved rather than undermined. This is generally seen as being a requirement for a stable and harmonious society.

 

Putting it all together, I'd argue that conservatives should be especially interested in allowing women into combat positions for the simple reason that not doing so is likely to create a generation of spinsters, illegitimate children and faithless husbands whenever a war breaks out. This is because modern societies simply do not have 'spare' males to throw away (women aren't dying in childbirth) and the results of creating too many 'spare' females would be to undermine the monogamous societies that they are supposedly defending.

 

Happily, casualties should not actually have any effect on a society's ability to reproduce as modern societies also run (as mentioned) with very low overall rates of childbirth. Which means that, in the event of a war, your population would still have excess capacity to produce children so long as enough breeding pairs remain to fill the hole in your population. My great-grandparents could have done this damn near single-handed. But I'd say that 5 kids is probably the limit for most parents. Thus, as long as more than 20% of your breeding pairs make it back home to repopulate the nation you're good.

 

For the progressive this is, of course, something of a non-starter. They could look at the idea of resurrecting widespread polygamy or developing government-controlled artificial wombs as viable options. For conservatives who want to maintain a one-mother, one-father nuclear family (which is and was a myth, by the way) as the normal type of human reproductive unit, however, I'd seriously consider finding ways to allow more women to fight and die in the event of a total war breaking out.

 

I would think the society that generally kept to a monogamous model, but was flexible on the matter of polygyny, and jealously guarded its women and protected them from combat would have an advantage in rebounding from a total war, don't you think?

 

 

I think that due to the peculiarities of the US this was destined to become a big deal no matter what. But yeah, from outside it seems like a lot of moaning and wailing over something pretty trivial.

 

Inside the warm (dare I say womb-like) confines of SH, however, we are all about non-trivial arguments. Like so:

 

Read that thing, savour it. Its kind was hunted to extinction and now it stands alone, braying in the mist-soaked air.

 

Holy crap it's been a long time since I wrote that.

[Collimatrix]

Relevant.

[CrashbotUS]

Also relevant. 

 

http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/careers/army/2015/07/10/three-women-third-try-pass-darby-phase/29968107/

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

I thought "thong biter" was a new cool-kid adjective for "carpet muncher", which would have made sense given the subject matter and the current - and hopefully fading - fad of personal grooming.

Now I have to creep up out of the gutter and educate myself on this "Thomas Carlyle".

 

 

So you're pro bush or not?   I have to say, I like a little bush down there, girl parts need some covering.  Not all hippy jungle, but a nice little patch. 

[Donward]

So you're pro bush or not? I have to say, I like a little bush down there, girl parts need some covering. Not all hippy jungle, but a nice little patch.

Well, you know I voted Bush & Dick in 2000 and 2004...

[CrashbotUS]

Remove bush. 

[Toxn]

Bush-free = itchy as fuck.

Al Gore fans take note.

[Sturgeon]

Which is the thing that nobody wants and everyone is sure will happen anyway.

Although look at some of my previous posts for the argument that standards themselves are not exactly designed only with the task in mind.

So I guess another question is: what standards are indisputably necessary for the role?

 

Pretty sure special treatment is exactly what the gender ideologues want. In every action, they display this, at least in the US.

[Sturgeon]

So you're pro bush or not?   I have to say, I like a little bush down there, girl parts need some covering.  Not all hippy jungle, but a nice little patch. 

 

I am pro-clean-and-hygenic-bush, anti-feminist-liberated-bush.

[Toxn]

I would think the society that generally kept to a monogamous model, but was flexible on the matter of polygyny, and jealously guarded its women and protected them from combat would have an advantage in rebounding from a total war, don't you think?

Holy crap it's been a long time since I wrote that.

A pre-industrial society, maybe. In the modern era you're either going to be able to soak the casualties and rebound on increased numbers of kids (see: continental combatants in WWI) or you're going to see everyone die in a fire irrespective of gender.

We're long since in the era were social cohesion matters more for prosecuting a war than breeding rate. So the society which is most cohesive will win.

I've been reading Tooze's Deluge, which forcefully makes that point and allies it to the idea that the legitimacy which comes with more democratic and inclusive forms of government was actually one of the things allowing the combatants of the first world war to fight as long as they did. And if you look at who crumbled and who stayed in till the end, this point becomes intuitively obvious.

A society can, of course, change over to something like polygyny after a war. I just don't think it provides any advantage to a society not already set up along those lines. It certainly hasn't been the case that monogamous marriage societies have switched over to polygamy as a way of buffering population. Instead, the simply end up collecting plenty of 'spare' woman who can't marry.

[Toxn]

Pretty sure special treatment is exactly what the gender ideologues want. In every action, they display this, at least in the US.

Per my earlier arguments, it seems like both sides are wanting special treatment. Lots of waah waah waah, very little attempting to honestly ask what standards should be set and sticking to them.

All of which leads to the reducto-ad-absurdum of one side arguing for quotas and the other trying to assert that the soldiery should all be supermen.

Actual soldiers seem to be the most level-headed here. Which, frankly, should say it all.

[Sturgeon]

A pre-industrial society, maybe. In the modern era you're either going to be able to soak the casualties and rebound on increased numbers of kids (see: continental combatants in WWI) or you're going to see everyone die in a fire irrespective of gender.

We're long since in the era were social cohesion matters more for prosecuting a war than breeding rate. So the society which is most cohesive will win.

I've been reading Tooze's Deluge, which forcefully makes that point and allies it to the idea that the legitimacy which comes with more democratic and inclusive forms of government was actually one of the things allowing the combatants of the first world war to fight as long as they did. And if you look at who crumbled and who stayed in till the end, this point becomes intuitively obvious.

A society can, of course, change over to something like polygyny after a war. I just don't think it provides any advantage to a society not already set up along those lines. It certainly hasn't been the case that monogamous marriage societies have switched over to polygamy as a way of buffering population. Instead, the simply end up collecting plenty of 'spare' woman who can't marry.

 

I don't think I buy the idea that autocratic societies are less cohesive. I mean, for one thing, acting like democracy enhances cohesion seems to ignore all the times in your own continent alone that it's caused endless civil war and depravity. Not really cohesion, is it?

 

If you look at the "democracies" that were cohesive enough to win wars, you'll note that they weren't really democratic in anything but the most superfluous ways. The United States was, at the time of World War II, the most autocratic it's ever been, and the legacy established after that one was of non-democratic rule with an attached democratic apparatus totally ancillary and almost incidental.

 

The Soviet Union... I don't think anyone is going to argue that's a truly democratic state.

Seems to me, the more democratic a place is, the less cohesive it is.

 

Oh, and final note, why would a country have to be democratic to be inclusive? Wouldn't a theocracy with an deity-autocrat be just as inclusive, if not more so? After all, it's got everyone praying and going to church.

 

 

Per my earlier arguments, it seems like both sides are wanting special treatment. Lots of waah waah waah, very little attempting to honestly ask what standards should be set and sticking to them.

All of which leads to the reducto-ad-absurdum of one side arguing for quotas and the other trying to assert that the soldiery should all be supermen.

Actual soldiers seem to be the most level-headed here. Which, frankly, should say it all.

 

Ah-ah! Appeal to authority, mate. Chris Hernandez is definitely an exceptionally rational person, but I still disagree with him. I think, generally speaking, you don't want to be throwing wombs into battle when you don't have to. I think the US really doesn't understand how important that is, because we've never been devastated in a war.

Interestingly, the Russians - who do understand - fielded large numbers of female soldiers during the war. However, three things must be remembered: 1. the Soviets were absolutely desperate. 2. The women made up a pretty small fraction of overall forces. 3. The women were generally confined to auxiliary roles.

I don't think it's helpful to talk about "sides" in an argument. I would rather you take the writings of one or more people and try to analyze their arguments. You can see, I am sure, how generalizing arguments of a "side" leads pretty directly to just taking the most ridiculous ones and putting them together.

[CrashbotUS]

Pretty sure special treatment is exactly what the gender ideologues want. In every action, they display this, at least in the US.

They are already getting it to a degree, even without adjusting for the potential additions to combat arms. This is clear in the different fitness requirements for men and women and most of us ex military people have 101 anecdotes we could share.

 

 The issue is which standards should ALL soldiers meet in order to perform specific MOS task. The debate over women being in combat roles is kind of pointless now, that train has already left the station. 

[Toxn]

I don't think I buy the idea that autocratic societies are less cohesive. I mean, for one thing, acting like democracy enhances cohesion seems to ignore all the times in your own continent alone that it's caused endless civil war and depravity. Not really cohesion, is it?

If you look at the "democracies" that were cohesive enough to win wars, you'll note that they weren't really democratic in anything but the most superfluous ways. The United States was, at the time of World War II, the most autocratic it's ever been, and the legacy established after that one was of non-democratic rule with an attached democratic apparatus totally ancillary and almost incidental.

The Soviet Union... I don't think anyone is going to argue that's a truly democratic state.

Seems to me, the more democratic a place is, the less cohesive it is.

Oh, and final note, why would a country have to be democratic to be inclusive? Wouldn't a theocracy with an deity-autocrat be just as inclusive, if not more so? After all, it's got everyone praying and going to church.

Ah-ah! Appeal to authority, mate. Chris Hernandez is definitely an exceptionally rational person, but I still disagree with him. I think, generally speaking, you don't want to be throwing wombs into battle when you don't have to. I think the US really doesn't understand how important that is, because we've never been devastated in a war.

Interestingly, the Russians - who do understand - fielded large numbers of female soldiers during the war. However, three things must be remembered: 1. the Soviets were absolutely desperate. 2. The women made up a pretty small fraction of overall forces. 3. The women were generally confined to auxiliary roles.

I don't think it's helpful to talk about "sides" in an argument. I would rather you take the writings of one or more people and try to analyze their arguments. You can see, I am sure, how generalizing arguments of a "side" leads pretty directly to just taking the most ridiculous ones and putting them together.

Not democracy, legitimacy. A society doesn't have to be completely democratic (again, see WWI combatants) but it does have to have buy-in from the mass of people.

Democracy isn't a panacea, but it tends to makes societies more legitimate.

[Toxn]

Case in point: compare the Russian Empire during WWI and the USSR during WWII. One actually got less repressive and more liberal during the war.

[Sturgeon]

Not democracy, legitimacy. A society doesn't have to be completely democratic (again, see WWI combatants) but it does have to have buy-in from the mass of people.

Democracy isn't a panacea, but it tends to makes societies more legitimate.

 

I really don't agree. It would be an extended conversation to explain why, and I have some work I need to do tonight.

 

Case in point: compare the Russian Empire during WWI and the USSR during WWII. One actually got less repressive and more liberal during the war.

 

I honestly can't tell which you mean.

[Tied]

I don't think I buy the idea that autocratic societies are less cohesive. I mean, for one thing, acting like democracy enhances cohesion seems to ignore all the times in your own continent alone that it's caused endless civil war and depravity. Not really cohesion, is it?

 

If you look at the "democracies" that were cohesive enough to win wars, you'll note that they weren't really democratic in anything but the most superfluous ways. The United States was, at the time of World War II, the most autocratic it's ever been, and the legacy established after that one was of non-democratic rule with an attached democratic apparatus totally ancillary and almost incidental.

 

The Soviet Union... I don't think anyone is going to argue that's a truly democratic state.

Seems to me, the more democratic a place is, the less cohesive it is.

 

Oh, and final note, why would a country have to be democratic to be inclusive? Wouldn't a theocracy with an deity-autocrat be just as inclusive, if not more so? After all, it's got everyone praying and going to church.

 

 

 

Ah-ah! Appeal to authority, mate. Chris Hernandez is definitely an exceptionally rational person, but I still disagree with him. I think, generally speaking, you don't want to be throwing wombs into battle when you don't have to. I think the US really doesn't understand how important that is, because we've never been devastated in a war.

Interestingly, the Russians - who do understand - fielded large numbers of female soldiers during the war. However, three things must be remembered: 1. the Soviets were absolutely desperate. 2. The women made up a pretty small fraction of overall forces. 3. The women were generally confined to auxiliary roles.

I don't think it's helpful to talk about "sides" in an argument. I would rather you take the writings of one or more people and try to analyze their arguments. You can see, I am sure, how generalizing arguments of a "side" leads pretty directly to just taking the most ridiculous ones and putting them together.

 

I would like to point at that numbers have gone down since, but have been making a return in Police and auxiliary roles

But yes, very, very small percentages,

 

I think this video, though crudely animated and voiced, sums up my opinion in women in arms in general. That i support them in the auxiliary role, but they can and will never make up the fist of the armed forces of any modern nation without disaster

 

Case in point: compare the Russian Empire during WWI and the USSR during WWII. One actually got less repressive and more liberal during the war.

Well atleast in world war 2, the Russian leadership cared about its soilders other than "the Tzar will fall if the Germans are completey victorious, just make sure they dont have any ammo left for when they reach Moscow"

 

Which is ironic, because the very small and very retarded Pro-Tzar crowd in modern Russia always cites Nicholas as being some great military leader

When in fact the Russian royalty in world war 1 and years past, has cared very little for the Russian solider, and almost every successful General in Russian history has either fought under a Communist banner or butted heads heavily with the Royalty 

[Toxn]

Update:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/17/two_female_soldiers_complete_army_ranger_school.html

 

I've heard that part of the dynamic driving this whole thing is that the US army basically caps your ability to get promoted (and hence get access to sweet, sweet private-sector cheddar upon retirement) unless you pass the Ranger course and have experience that could reasonably be argued to be combat or combat-adjacent. So letting/not letting teh womyn in is also about expanding/limiting the competition for top slots amongst senior personnel.

 

People more knowledgeable than I can comment further.

[Belesarius]

Welp.  This is interesting.

 

 

http://www.armyrecognition.com/armies_in_the_world_analysis_focus/u.s._navy_is_planning_to_open_its_elite_seal_teams_to_women_11908151.html

[Toxn]

Since WoTR just fucking refuses to let this thing die, I'm going to crunch the numbers a bit.

 

We've already established that height and body fat are the prime determinants here, so let's roll with that for a bit.

 

Average height is well-studied and provides us with the knowledge that, in a given population, women are two standard deviations shorter then men on average. As height is normally distributed, we can easily use this to work out what percentage (specifically, what maximum percentage) of women you'd expect to see in a gender-blind army.

 

The minimum male height requirement for the US armed forces is 152.4 cm, while the average heights/standard deviations are 175.5/7.4 cm (male) and 161.8/6.9 cm (female). This means that the US army is currently willing to accept men who are between 1.5 and 2 standard deviations below average in terms of height (ie: around 95% of the male population). If the rules were applied evenly, this would mean that the army should take in women around 1 SD below average (around 84%). Take these together, and your initial population of recruits should be 53% male and 47% female. This represents the maximum for the US army, as it presently functions, applying the same criteria to men and women*.

 

If we decide that we don't want, you know, 95% of the potential male population getting in (because we're now accepting the arguments about soldiers as übermenschen at face value) and instead limit ourselves to the top 50%, things get more interesting. Here, only 50% of your male recruits would get accepted and only 1.5% of your female recruits. This would lead to your initial population being around 3% female and 97% male.

 

Edit: it should also lead to your armed forces being overwhelmingly white, with people of Northern European descent making up the bulk of the army.

 

At present, the US armed forces as a whole are around 15% female.

 

 

* It presently applies a standard which allows men and women under 1.5-2 SD to apply, leading to an initial recruit pool that should be 50:50.

[Sturgeon]

Oh! Oh! I actually just thought of something productive to add to this conversation:

Seems to me this whole controversy is the result of the evolution from Enlightenment warfare to modern warfare. Pre-1900 warfare consisted essentially of large bodies of fighting men moving with limited or no organized logistical support until they made contact with the enemy and the fighting began. Post-1900 warfare has become more and more a contest of "glaciers", where huge non-combat logistical trains support a more (proportionally) limited number of men who actually do the fighting.

This is important because even a 19th Century military man probably wouldn't have a big problem with women being employed in ancillary roles, and I cite their willingness to employ female battlefield nurses as an example of this. So women being truck drivers, pilots, secretaries, etc, etc, etc in support of a war effort is absolutely fine, and basically nobody argues against this.

The problem has arisen that these women have by necessity been enrolled in the military to perform these roles, which has allowed them to culturally infiltrate what was previously (also by necessity) a huge boys' club*. This has resulted in a clash between the (in my opinion eminently sensible) tradition of not sending women into combat, and a perception by/of women in the military in ancillary roles as them being somehow "second-class" in the boys' club, and the boys in the boys' club feeling like women are intruding. Add to that the fact that modern warfare recognizes no border between the soldier and the truck driver, especially not when you're fighting Wahhabist-inspired aixophile terrorists instead of the Nazis, and you've got a pretty substantial mess on your hands.

 

Put this way, and considering the current cultural climate in the U.S., there is no correct answer to this problem. The only thing the military can do is its utmost to prevent toxic female leadership from gaining a hold and wrecking whole sectors of the organization(s).

 

*today, the term "boys' club" is almost always used with a slight implied sneer - and if it's not used that way, it's almost always read that way - but I don't mean to use it that way. I am fine with boys' clubs.

[Collimatrix]

This just means that the US needs to transition to weapons that have a smaller in-theater logistical footprint.  Like ICBMs and Project Pluto.