Estrogen and danger

[Donward]

I... I don't know. I'm just kind of lurking here in the shadows with Toxn waiting for this thread to slowly evolve into a picture thread of sexy female soldiers.

The United States has been fortunate to date that we haven't really had to rely on using women in combat - or near combat - roles (legends about Molly Pitcher aside). Although in our two biggest major industrial wars, World War 2 and the Civil War the use of female labor was a crucial factor whether it was "Rosie the Riveter or the Midwest farm wife harvesting wheat with a McCormick Reaper.

As for the present, the Genie (whether you dream of her or not) is well out of the bottle with women fighter pilots, Secretaries of Defense and fuel truck drivers (vis a vis Private Lynch).

Given that our immediate enemies are a bunch of fundamentalists aiming to recreate the Seventh Century Caliphate, I'm not sure if using women to fight them is a net positive or negative in terms of demoralizing or enraging Haji, not that I give a damn what they think.

[Sturgeon]

Given that our immediate enemies are a bunch of fundamentalists aiming to recreate the Seventh Century Caliphate, I'm not sure if using women to fight them is a net positive or negative in terms of demoralizing or enraging Haji, not that I give a damn what they think.

 

Would that they were! That would at least be more civilized!

[Donward]

Yeah. Discussing ISIS and what I reLly think of them is probably going further afield of the point of this thread. But there was that woman fighter pilot from (that one place) dropping bombs on the pissants. And I vaguely recall reading a story of either Kurdish or Christian militias with all-women fighting them. (It's Thanksgiving, I've been celebrating. Doubly so given my Avatar and the late night game).

[Toxn]

The Kurds, bless their poor downtrodden hearts.

[Collimatrix]

Someone arguing for women in the infantry.

 

This fellow was on the pointy end, so his opinion counts.

[Toxn]

He also makes the point in comments (similar to mine) that people are suddenly all about infantry standards being sacrosanct and ultra-high now that women might get their cooties on them. 

 

I mean; God knows all the blokes they let in back in the good old days^tm were all over 180cm, able to run 10km and could do obstacle courses in full packs right out of the gate. Small, weak, sickly, overweight, unfit, myopic, stupid and uneducated men, of course, never made it into the infantry. And obviously the standards we have now are perfect and perfectly suited to determining the best material for the demanding job of combat. And obviously, even if we only let people in based on the existing standards they must all be of the same race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation and like the same sports or unit cohesion will cease to exist.

Because the US army is literally Sparta now. 

[Donward]

As a reminder, Audie Murphy wasn't big, rough and tough enough for the Marine Corp.

[Sturgeon]

Chris Hernandez really knocked it out of the park. I mean, I don't agree with him or anything, but his argument is pretty watertight. You have to get down to fundamental disagreements in first premises to assail his position.

[Toxn]

Agreed, although I'm more on the 'let all who want come' side when it comes to military service.

 

That said, I don't think it's necessarily an untenable position to argue that women should be kept out of the armed forces. And having recently gotten a more detailed glimpse at just how intensive (and expensive) the process of producing people is, I feel you can make real arguments for a system that identifies only the most replaceable and expendable individuals to send off to war*. Here, for purely biological reasons, it's going to be men that society can more afford to throw away.

 

I just wish that people would make their argument (whatever it is) rather than play the 'but, but... my unit cohesion!' card or similar. Because that shit is cynical, disingenuous and weak - if you're going to wilt away under criticism, then for god's sake grow thicker skin and come up with better arguments.

 

Ideas, in the end, are only worth something if they can receive a pounding without falling over. This style of argument where you explicitly attempt to prevent that by means of misdirection and evasion just annoys me.

 

 

*It could, of course, also be used as the basis advocating mandatory welfare for mothers, legalisation and normalisation of poly households, old-school polygamy and a bunch of other things.

[Collimatrix]

 

 

*It could, of course, also be used as the basis advocating mandatory welfare for mothers, legalisation and normalisation of poly households, old-school polygamy and a bunch of other things.

 

Robert Heinlein is listening from beyond the grave.

[Donward]

Nonsense. When Robert Heinlein died, his body became FOOD and we ate him.

[xthetenth]

Agreed, although I'm more on the 'let all who want come' side when it comes to military service.

 

That said, I don't think it's necessarily an untenable position to argue that women should be kept out of the armed forces. And having recently gotten a more detailed glimpse at just how intensive (and expensive) the process of producing people is, I feel you can make real arguments for a system that identifies only the most replaceable and expendable individuals to send off to war*. Here, for purely biological reasons, it's going to be men that society can more afford to throw away.

 

I just wish that people would make their argument (whatever it is) rather than play the 'but, but... my unit cohesion!' card or similar. Because that shit is cynical, disingenuous and weak - if you're going to wilt away under criticism, then for god's sake grow thicker skin and come up with better arguments.

 

Ideas, in the end, are only worth something if they can receive a pounding without falling over. This style of argument where you explicitly attempt to prevent that by means of misdirection and evasion just annoys me.

 

 

*It could, of course, also be used as the basis advocating mandatory welfare for mothers, legalisation and normalisation of poly households, old-school polygamy and a bunch of other things.

 

I find it a bit strange how often people make arguments like the one about men being more expendable. Men aren't any more expensive to make, and if anything, it's conflating the value of people as agents of biological reproduction in a case where everyone's trying their hardest to make more people and stay ahead of high lethality and people in an economy where they just don't find it worth their time and effort to breed above repopulation numbers, where the costs of having a child have overtaken the perceived benefit. The second is a very different problem from the first, and that one's a problem that's probably got a lot to do with really fully using women as workers, so we haven't had much time to think that through. I'm not sure the high levels of individualism for people and the nuclear family we promote are really fully compatible with both an entirely working society and a working society.

[Toxn]

Considering how new the nuclear family is as an institution (working families are as old as peasantry), I feel that the problem lies more in that direction than in the decline of the nigh-mythical stay at home mom.

my take is that its the extended family unit that makes it more feasible to have children by the simple virtue of spreading the load. Having my parents nearby, for instance, has almost certainly saved our marriage from taking strains that push it past its yeild point.

As for men as thr expendable gender, you make very valid points.

[Sturgeon]

I find it a bit strange how often people make arguments like the one about men being more expendable. Men aren't any more expensive to make, and if anything, it's conflating the value of people as agents of biological reproduction in a case where everyone's trying their hardest to make more people and stay ahead of high lethality and people in an economy where they just don't find it worth their time and effort to breed above repopulation numbers, where the costs of having a child have overtaken the perceived benefit. The second is a very different problem from the first, and that one's a problem that's probably got a lot to do with really fully using women as workers, so we haven't had much time to think that through. I'm not sure the high levels of individualism for people and the nuclear family we promote are really fully compatible with both an entirely working society and a working society.

 

I'm not sure I would be so quick to throw away a behavioral advantage that is millions of years old just because for the past hundred years the limiting factor on population growth is how inconvenienced people feel by children and not how many wombs there are about.

[Donward]

Welp, time to go back to polygamy, serfdom, castration and eunuch soldiers. Seems the Ottomans and Mamlukes had it right after all.

[Sturgeon]

Welp, time to go back to polygamy, serfdom, castration and eunuch soldiers. Seems the Ottomans and Mamlukes had it right after all.

 

What, is World War I so far behind us that you couldn't imagine a war that devastated the female population so badly that it caused serious problems for a society?

[Donward]

I seem to recall that in World War 1, the French government encouraging soldiers on leave to knock up their wives, lovers or whomever in order to balance the population decline.

 

And I just wanted to write that one-liner about the Ottomans. You honestly don't think I have something serious to add to this discussion at this juncture?

[Sturgeon]

Not really, but I do fantasize about it constantly.

[Donward]

Being the sultan surrounded by his harem? Or being one of the eunuch soldiers sent off to fight in Austria and the Orient?

[Toxn]

I'm not sure I would be so quick to throw away a behavioral advantage that is millions of years old just because for the past hundred years the limiting factor on population growth is how inconvenienced people feel by children and not how many wombs there are about.

I'd be exceedingly wary of making an argument rooted in anthropology without taking some time to consider just how mind-bogglingly diverse human social structures and sexual practices have proved to be. You can construct a narrative for pretty much anything using this particular assertion.

 

 

Being the sultan surrounded by his harem? Or being one of the eunuch soldiers sent off to fight in Austria and the Orient?

Playing the noble rather than the peasant - I'm down with the ren-faire approach to history.

 

Seriously, though, I'd take eunuch over the cage any day. Better my body mangled than my mind.

[Sturgeon]

Being the sultan surrounded by his harem? Or being one of the eunuch soldiers sent off to fight in Austria and the Orient?

 

No, about you having something serious to add to the discussion.

 

I'd be exceedingly wary of making an argument rooted in anthropology without taking some time to consider just how mind-bogglingly diverse human social structures and sexual practices have proved to be. You can construct a narrative for pretty much anything using this particular assertion.

 

Do you think I'm talking about relationship arrangements, or women in combat?

 

I'm talking about the latter. Wombs are valuable, phalluses much less so. The society that sacrifices phalluses before wombs will have an advantage in terms of reproductive capacity over the one that sacrifices both equally. That has nothing to do with social structures and sexual practices, it's just the nature of human biology.

[Toxn]

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.

[renhanxue]

I think the US has gone about introducing women in the armed forces in the most backwards way possible, really. Treat other people like people and don't make a big deal about it and it won't become a big deal.

In the Swedish army, men and women often share showers/other hygienic facilities, especially in the field. They almost always share tents in the field. Sometimes they even share sleeping bags in the field. At least one of the Swedish submarine crews has one (1) female crew member - take one guess as to whether she gets any special treatment/facilities of her own on board a tiny ass littoral sub. The physical/psychological tests/requirements are the same for men and women; as of last year no woman had finished ranger school (yet - there's been good attempts but they've been forced to abort for various reasons).

If you can't separate private and professional life and treat your fellow soldiers like people like a decent human being, you have problems that you shouldn't blame on women.

[Toxn]

I think the US has gone about introducing women in the armed forces in the most backwards way possible, really. Treat other people like people and don't make a big deal about it and it won't become a big deal.

In the Swedish army, men and women often share showers/other hygienic facilities, especially in the field. They almost always share tents in the field. Sometimes they even share sleeping bags in the field. At least one of the Swedish submarine crews has one (1) female crew member - take one guess as to whether she gets any special treatment/facilities of her own on board a tiny ass littoral sub. The physical/psychological tests/requirements are the same for men and women; as of last year no woman had finished ranger school (yet - there's been good attempts but they've been forced to abort for various reasons).

If you can't separate private and professional life and treat your fellow soldiers like people like a decent human being, you have problems that you shouldn't blame on women.

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:

I too ride this suicide-sled of ancestors' bones down the great crumbling hill of progress

 

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

[Toxn]

Well, that or it's Friday afternoon. In any case, this thred was a good 'un and I felt like hauling it out of the dirt and adding to it. Though I am, as always, in danger of contradicting myself to the point that my posts become schizophrenic. 

 

Edit: Really, look at this thread. I genuinely think that we few schlubs had more constructive debate, in under three pages, than the websites I quoted in the OP managed in months of back-and-forth between ostensibly-qualified pundits.