Sturgeon Posted December 22, 2015 Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 Looks like it's going that way. Ditto nearly all of the developed world. I see. You will note that was not a question, so pardon my confusion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted December 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 I see. You will note that was not a question, so pardon my confusion. Apologies. It is a small piece of productivity, at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted December 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 If we were trying to have the nigh-mythical productive and rational conversation about gender and society, I'd point to something like an instrumental understanding of the roles we're talking about: What is the purpose of the armed forces? To win wars, yes; but that is itself a sort of reductive and simplistic view. What is the purpose of the education system? To produce future factory workers, office drones and essay writers? To produce the few hundred people who will provide meaningful breakthroughs in research (with a byproduct of hundreds of thousands of people who do useless research or wind up with useless qualifications)? Once we've nailed down questions like this, we can move to the actual talking points: does physical strength matter? If so, is it captured properly in the tests we have for it? Does educational achievement matter? If so, then is it captured and reflected properly in the system we have? Finally, having drilled back up the layers, we can talk about the pertinent facts and how they apply in regards to the above questions. This whole argument (along with a bunch of other things related to gender) represents something like talking at cross purposes. Both sides are operating from different basic assumptions, to the extent that they barely recognise each other's logic. That is why this argument is and has been unproductive, and why my OP is written the way it is (seriously, reread the first few paragraphs). I see my argument regarding education (which was admittedly a nice diversion) as merely a continuation of the same approach this thread has followed throughout. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted December 22, 2015 Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 Well, your first post here tonight as follows exactly the form of a very cheap argument tactic designed to throw the opposition off-base. I don't get that from the OP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toxn Posted December 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 Well, your first post here tonight as follows exactly the form of a very cheap argument tactic designed to throw the opposition off-base. I don't get that from the OP. Argument by absurdity disclaimer wasn't enough? Dude, you're going to ruin the flow of my OPs... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xthetenth Posted December 22, 2015 Report Share Posted December 22, 2015 Well then...http://m.military.com/daily-news/2015/10/12/women-likely-have-register-draft-army-secretary-says.html I'm going to derail the current tangent cheerfully. This is a really good thing. There's the obvious SJW stuff about the weird social context the draft is in as a sort of price of citizenship, but there's something that most criticism misses even if you accept the postulate that women are biologically unfit for combat (because of some physical limitation that can't be expressed in terms of physical limitations, because women can't handle it, because men can't handle it or whatever). The modern military isn't just the infantry, there's a heck of a lot of tail to back up the teeth these days. Firstly, every person who can go into a tail job but not a tooth job that frees up someone who can go into both to take a tooth job is every bit as good for combat ability as someone who can do the combat job. Second, tail jobs these days require a bunch of specialist skills and education at an aggregate level. The more access you have to the full human brainpower pool in your country the better. That's also one of the places where the military may very well need to get a whole bunch of people who would be crazy to not go into private industry, and nobody's going to say that women are somehow totally incapable of doing intellectual labor even in a place like the US where there's a huge disparity in the proportion of American women in computer science compared to those from other nations. I wouldn't be surprised at all if experts in things like computer security got drafted way out of proportion to the overall population if we get in a war where conscription matters. Belesarius 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tied Posted December 23, 2015 Report Share Posted December 23, 2015 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/'>http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/13/AR2009121302922.html'>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/13/AR2009121302922.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/court-prepares-affirmative-action-decision-softer-standards-men-182205509.html'>http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/court-prepares-affirmative-action-decision-softer-standards-men-182205509.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11452589/Have-young-men-become-the-new-educational-underclass.html'>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11452589/Have-young-men-become-the-new-educational-underclass.html http://europe.newsweek.com/what-if-colleges-had-lower-standards-boys-achieve-gender-balance-223398?rm=eu'>http://europe.newsweek.com/what-if-colleges-had-lower-standards-boys-achieve-gender-balance-223398?rm=eu Given the above, I wonder how many of the folk participating in the women-in-combat-roles debate would be comfortable with simply banning men from studying anything that isn't maths, engineering or programming? So men being extremely profficent at the only science that counts (engineering) is a bad thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brick Fight Posted December 24, 2015 Report Share Posted December 24, 2015 The original point was kind of lost on me. This is like when two Redditors detract from a topic and start yelling about who is more "logical" and likes "rational" things better. A good soldier's a good soldier, and if the Army can deal with it, and get its rape/harassment shit together, I don't see any particularly negative effects of this. Belesarius and xthetenth 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrashbotUS Posted January 10, 2016 Report Share Posted January 10, 2016 The only issues I see are mainly physiological and deal with bone mass and the likelihood of increased stress fractures in females under a combat load. These types of injuries make you combat ineffective and decreases the readiness of your unit. For the Army at least, aside from a few specific jobs (11b, 18x, 19d, and 13f) repeatedly carrying around a bunch of heavy stuff (which is when the bone mass situation arises) isn't really an issue, so females should be able to hit the ground running in those. Belesarius and xthetenth 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted April 17, 2016 Report Share Posted April 17, 2016 Relevant: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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