Feminists - A question.

[Zoolander]

Wow what a fucking fantastic quote lol.

No idea wtf you guys are talking about with this pro-men shit though. The only really problematic bias out there that goes against males is dealing with fathers rights over their children - we are consistently screwed hard core when it comes to custody and what not, although it is getting better.

Oh and I guess rape cases involving male victims...

/snicker

[Darus Grey]

People sign prenups in this day and age, or do they not have those in your woman-hating country

If a guy doesn't sign a prenup before getting married and his wife takes half his shit in a divorce, then that's his own fault.

Pre-nups are meaningless, they can be appealed, nullified, and a pre-nup cannot supersede a state/federal law. They protect against jack and shit.

The fact that you think men need to be protected from marriage to begin with should tell you all you need to know about why marriage as an institution is highly biased against men, and why smart men don't participate at all.

[Warudo Ecksu]

[Niiro]

I personally believe marriage is a load of horse shit and cum stirred together in a bowl of marshmallows and vomit.

I'm almost certain that's a fetish for some people, so for them it's all good I suppose.

[Vail]

The fact that you think men need to be protected from marriage to begin with should tell you all you need to know about why marriage as an institution is highly biased against men, and why smart men don't participate at all.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...y_clapping.gif

[Cadsuane]

Bear in mind, I am not saying that all women in the military are like this. Just like the men, there are plenty of women who work hard, do their jobs well, etc. However, the military tends to attract some women who know they can skate by easily because they are women. They know they will never be held to the same rigorous standards as men, and they abuse the provisions that are built into the job that allow them to take time off. They don't have the sense of unity that a lot of men end up with, which makes sense in some ways but ends up setting them both apart from and often against the men in the unit. A lot of them truly truly truly embody an all-for-yourself attitude, which just doesn't work in this kind of setting.

There's also a whole subsection of dirty sluts within that category. Women who actually want to have the whole barracks run a train on them. I just don't even.

In alot of ways the military recruits from the bottom of the barrel regardless of the gender, so it could be said that they attract a particular sort of male as well. Basically what I'm getting at here is that the military doesn't intentionally recruit irresponsible women to make feminists look bad, so if there are women out there who would be superior soldiers than the ones currently serving, then there are also men out there who be superior to the men currently serving. Any advocacy for women in the service needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for the failures as well as the successes of women to be honest and responsible.

I have no problem with the physical requirements being different for women and men. I understand that men often have more muscle mass than women because our bodies are just made differently and have different hormones that affect things like that, so it's not a big deal. As long as all women are held to the same standard and not allowed to let shit slide because they're on their period or something.

I do think it's bullshit that women cannot be deployed as infantry, because if you read about any of the reasons why this is, most of them are pretty terrible. I think many of the same things were said about blacks in the military initially, so they made units that consisted completely of African-Americans, who then proved themselves many times over. Maybe that's the next step for us. The only way we can build trust and confidence in our ability is to show what we're capable of doing, so maybe that should be done. Integration is a process.

Some reasons for keeping us off the battlefield are actually somewhat legitimate (or at least not completely stupid) concerns. One of which is the fear that female POWs will be sexually abused, which is considered so unacceptable that we're not allowed to serve in some capacities to protect us from this horrible horrible fate. The problem is that realistically, anyone who is going into a war situation understands what can happen if they're captured. It would be pretty terrible to be apprehended and raped over and over. It would also be pretty terrible to be apprehended and have your fingernails ripped out, or be tortured to death. If I've accepted that this may happen to me, and I make the choice to go ahead in the face of that, I don't need a protective father figure condescendingly patting me on the shoulder and telling me it's too dangerous to go play with the boys. There needs to be some respect for our personal choices.

Another concern that I think is somewhat legitimate is how having women there will affect the men. It's been explained to me that the concern is basically that men will choose to intervene in situations to save the lives of women over men because they're just conditioned to be more protective of females. I can't really argue against that, no matter how silly it seems, because there is a lot of cultural conditioning that makes that pretty likely in a lot of cases. It's probably not even a conscious decision that would be made. The best answer I have is that they need to be conditioned to look at fellow soldiers as sexless as well as looking past race, religion, or any kind of bond of friendship they may have with one person in particular over everyone else. Does that make sense? I'm sure there was once an argument that white soldiers were more likely to come to the aid of other white soldiers, and that's why they couldn't fight with blacks and hispanics and whatever else, but that's just something that has to be overcome.

As far as protecting them from sexual abuse at home, on our own soil or in our own bases and boats, I really couldn't tell you what needs to happen. They already have their own quarters, and there are already rules in place against certain types of "high risk" behavior where sexual contact seems likely. The ramifications for sexual abuse are pretty fucking severe, too. People can be stripped of rank, sent to military prison, dishonorably discharged, etc. Claims of sexual misconduct are taken pretty seriously. There is still an attitude of "she was asking for it by dressing/acting in that manner," among many people, though. I really don't know how that should be or can be addressed.

Comparing it to the segregation of black soldiers in the military is interesting actually. One of the arguments against it (and you mentioned this as well) was that racial tensions would degrade the cohesiveness and combat effectiveness of a unit which actually did become a genuine problem when blacks were allowed to serve in combat. If that serves as a legitimate analogy to what we're currently discussing, then it stands to reason that the effect that women would have on mixed units would be mitigated by everyone simply getting used to the idea. That argument has a major pitfall; the tensions caused by blacks serving with whites are cultural while those that would hypothetically be caused by women serving may be hormonal as well as cultural. There's no guarantee that enlisted regular infantry will ever move past that.

There's also some question as to whether women can ever be held to the same standard as men. Women will always have a bolthole for desertion and dereliction of duty, and they will statistically serve shorter, less productive careers, until the military can court martial pregant women or order abortions to be carried out. There are questions to be raised about how women respond psychologically to combat stress and possible torture in comparison to men. Finally, the gap in physical strength between men and women is the most obvious thing that makes the vast majority of women unsuitable for combat as anything other than light infantry or guerilla soldiers. I know we're pretty much on the same page here, but just to reiterate, affirmative action is simply an unacceptable measure that degrades the effectiveness of an armed force, ensuring that even if women are allowed to serve as infantry, they will do so in marginal numbers only.

[Ivve]

I think you have your reasons wrong, and I'm pretty sure i grasp the reality of the military. After spending six years in the army, i can tell you from personal experience that women are generally ill-suited as soldiers, and i'm the last person who would join any sort of "boy's club." Women aren't excluded from combat roles in the military on the basis of sexism, outmoded opinions, or some male conspiracy.

The truth is that military life requires heavy lifting on a semi-daily basis in the form of motor pool, conex loading, and general "hey-you" details. Incidentally, the people picked to do these things are usually males, which fosters resentment, but that's beside the point. Military units do a workout routine including calisthenics and aerobics 4-5 days a week. As your wiki link pointed out, women simply aren't as strong as men, meaning that males get picked to do the unpleasant stuff, but females get the same pay. When women do have to do physical-strength-related stuff, they generally aren't very effective. The problem is underlined in the double standards for male and female pt tests. From your posts, i think you may be a military spouse, so you are likely aware of all this.

Anyway, the strength disparity is easily solved. Raise the physical fitness standards for women to match the standards of men. That just underlines the real problem, though. Women Break. A lot. I've seen some females(the top 2-3%) who are just as physically and mentally strong as the top 30% of their male counterpoints. The problem is, their bones, ligaments, and immune systems can't keep up with their muscles and their willpower. Over six years I've seen female after female have their bodies fail them in an airborne unit, even though they were up there in every other respect. Ivve, your wiki link mentions that the female skeleton is weaker, and while i never really knew exactly why, it makes sense to me now why a disproportionate number of women ended up in physical therapy. Thing is, physical therapy is expensive. So is the sick call that women utilize at over twice the rate of males. I'm sorry. I know it's not politically correct to say, but women in military combat roles simply isn't an economically viable option. Even if they are in great muscular and aerobic shape, their skeletons and ligaments break, and they are very expensive to fix. If they have to be permanently discharged, you just threw out 50-500k worth of training and education. If acknowledging this makes me a sexist, sign me up. I don't consider it any knock on women, though, just an unfortunate reality as far as the way they are put together.

I don't disagree with most of what you said here, and what I bolded is confirmation of something I did bring up in one of my earlier posts, which Senoska proceeded to tell me was made up fairytale bullshit. So, thank you.

However, I don't think that being physically more prone to muscular or skeletal injuries necessarily precludes them from being useful in every single possible combat role. Nor do I think that this is the honest and full picture of why women are not integrated in a more complete sort of way. I think that some of the more legitimate concerns like the plain and simple elevated cost of having a woman in the military (again, thank you, because I really only know bits and pieces of what exactly makes females more costly to employ) kind of opens the door for less sound reasoning to be allowed, if that makes any sense. Basically, it's less likely that someone will question a statement like "We should not do this for reasons A and B" when A is irrefutably true, even if the logic for B is shaky.

As it stands, I just don't think people are really putting their minds to solving the problem because it's not really perceived as a problem. Women aren't sent into combat, so why bother figuring out how they can actually do it effectively, right? If the problem is that women are not capable of doing the same things as men due to lower strength and greater injury rate, then my question is whether women are capable of achieving the same results but reaching the goal in a different manner, and whether that is or can be made a feasible practice. Essentially, working smarter and not harder. The answer, "fuck it; this won't work; give up," does not seem like a reasonable one to me. When has that excuse gotten anyone off the hook? I just think women are an untapped resource and they are capable of more than the military is willing to even give them a chance to do.

I am interested to hear your opinion of drafting women into the military as it is now. It seems to me they'd have to be placed in basically every desk jockey sort of job that even exists, and then those sad sacks would be sent off to combat. Well, maybe? I don't know how they do it in all branches of the military, but my understanding is that the Marines train everyone and make them periodically re-qualify themselves as fit for combat so that everyone can potentially do grunt shit if it comes right down to it. Maybe it's not the same. Regardless, how do you think people would feel about that? How do you feel about that?

Also, I'd like to understand why more people don't see that as a problem. Is it really of no concern to us what the actual volunteers think? We already know the draftees are probably not that psyched to be doing what they're doing. Is it really wise to alienate and displace people who otherwise would be motivated, willing participants in a war effort? It just doesn't seem smart to me at all.

In alot of ways the military recruits from the bottom of the barrel regardless of the gender, so it could be said that they attract a particular sort of male as well. Basically what I'm getting at here is that the military doesn't intentionally recruit irresponsible women to make feminists look bad, so if there are women out there who would be superior soldiers than the ones currently serving, then there are also men out there who be superior to the men currently serving. Any advocacy for women in the service needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for the failures as well as the successes of women to be honest and responsible.

I'm not saying anything about the situation on that level. All I meant to say is that it is not surprising to me that when one is basically scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as some of these people are concerned, that interacting with such a high concentration of those people would erode your opinion of the group as a whole. Whether this is goldbricking women, white racists, or any other kind of stereotype the military attracts, doesn't really matter. If the majority of your interactions with a particular group are markedly terrible, it's easy to taint your view of all of them. For example, talk to someone who has been deployed as an infantryman to Iraq and ask them for their opinion of Arabic people as a whole. You probably won't hear most of them singing the praises to that culture, because the overwhelming majority of their contact is probably with the really awful segment of the population. Similar problem. I really just said it to credit military members in general as not being evil sexist chauvinists, but rather as people who have negative opinions of others likely based on a series of negative experiences.

That argument has a major pitfall; the tensions caused by blacks serving with whites are cultural while those that would hypothetically be caused by women serving may be hormonal as well as cultural. There's no guarantee that enlisted regular infantry will ever move past that.

I'm sorry -- hormonal tension? Are you alluding to PMS or did I miss something? I don't understand what you mean. As far as I know, there are no hormonal reasons that make men and women incapable of working together.

[Vail]

I am interested to hear your opinion of drafting women into the military as it is now. It seems to me they'd have to be placed in basically every desk jockey sort of job that even exists, and then those sad sacks would be sent off to combat. Well, maybe? I don't know how they do it in all branches of the military, but my understanding is that the Marines train everyone and make them periodically re-qualify themselves as fit for combat so that everyone can potentially do grunt shit if it comes right down to it. Maybe it's not the same. Regardless, how do you think people would feel about that? How do you feel about that?

that's a marine's thing, my whole time in the navy I only held a gun on one occasion and it was in boot camp. Air force and navy really only have their physical fitness test (in which, women have lower standards to meet to be equally "qualified") and atleast in my command there is a a problem with women not even meeting their standards on the PRT(physical readiness test) and not receiving any of the punishments due to those who fail to meet the standard.

but hey, keep feeling safe when a portion of your military does it's push-ups on it's knees

then my question is whether women are capable of achieving the same results but reaching the goal in a different manner, and whether that is or can be made a feasible practice. Essentially, working smarter and not harder.

as the military develops better ways to do what it does best (take lives) their focus will never be on helping women be more "feasible" it'll be for the whole good of the military's performance. If there is a better way it won't be for women only, it'll be for the military as a whole. But physical labor isn't going away (not in our life time) and there is no way around it..

Comparing it to the segregation of black soldiers...

blacks in the military raised issues on both sides, but you would be hard pressed to find research suggesting blacks who joined the military under-performed, failed to meet equal standards (or even allowed to pass on lesser standards of fitness)
The same cannot be said for women in the military.

It's not a matter of acceptance: it's a matter of standards and the facts that the majority of women(especially the ones who do join the navy) cannot meet said standards.

[Faris]

People sign prenups in this day and age, or do they not have those in your woman-hating country

If a guy doesn't sign a prenup before getting married and his wife takes half his shit in a divorce, then that's his own fault.

please explain to me, why is there such a law to begin with, in a society that is apparently so liberal that a woman and a man have an equal chance at absolutely everything.

i'd rather live in a woman-hating country than a man-hating country

[Ivve]

that's a marine's thing, my whole time in the navy I only held a gun on one occasion and it was in boot camp. Air force and navy really only have their physical fitness test (in which, women have lower standards to meet to be equally "qualified") and atleast in my command there is a a problem with women not even meeting their standards on the PRT(physical readiness test) and not receiving any of the punishments due to those who fail to meet the standard.

but hey, keep feeling safe when a portion of your military does it's push-ups on it's knees

Who is it that's passing these women who are failing their fitness tests? That shit actually doesn't fly here, so maybe the rest of the branches need to get their shit together. I'm not there, so I can't say, but there are policies in place that they're actually violating. That is not the fault of someone who fails a fitness test -- it's the fault of the person who fails to report that their subordinate failed.

as the military develops better ways to do what it does best (take lives) their focus will never be on helping women be more "feasible" it'll be for the whole good of the military's performance. If there is a better way it won't be for women only, it'll be for the military as a whole. But physical labor isn't going away (not in our life time) and there is no way around it..

What could possibly be better than doubling the number of potential recruits for combat positions? One of the biggest challenges many branches face at this point in time is just getting the bodies. The services are strapped for people.

blacks in the military raised issues on both sides, but you would be hard pressed to find research suggesting blacks who joined the military under-performed, failed to meet equal standards (or even allowed to pass on lesser standards of fitness)
The same cannot be said for women in the military.

Again, if they are actually failing the standards that have been set in place for them to meet and someone is still passing them, that comes down to personal accountability, not some kind of fault of women as a whole. Talk about a responsibility shift. As someone who's been on the outside looking in at this for a few years now, failure to properly place responsibility is a gigantic problem within the military. Nobody wants to get their ass chewed.

[Cadsuane]

I'm sorry -- hormonal tension? Are you alluding to PMS or did I miss something? I don't understand what you mean. As far as I know, there are no hormonal reasons that make men and women incapable of working together.

Poor choice of words. Basically referring to the things you mentioned, male tendencies towards chivalry and all that, focus on objectives gets skewed. Question was whether difficulties arising from courtship instincts could be mitigated in the same manner as those arising from racial prejudices. If not, comparison is invalid.

[Vail]

by lesser standards I'm refering to the fact that the physical fitness test is less taxing on women then it is men:
less push-ups(don't have to do them correctly)
less sit-ups
less pull-ups
more time for the 1.5mile run (other branches have longer runs, again women are allowed more time)

What could possibly be better than doubling the number of potential recruits for combat positions? One of the biggest challenges many branches face at this point in time is just getting the bodies. The services are strapped for people.

the navy only a few years ago purposely went through a down sizing, offering some enlistees the chance for early outs. And continues to press it's "perform to serve" platform that forces people who don't advance in rank by xxx amount of time out of the service. Army and marines are different because of infantry positions but the air force and navy are currently down sizing and aren't really looking to bulk up too heavily in numbers.

oh and by doubling combat personal: recruiting women to take the jobs of men and force highly qualified soldiers who's profession is not infantry to become... infantry. Because that's the reality.

We could go on for decades discussion what's wrong with the military and it's approach for recruitment and why it socially struggles with the modern social identity. However, it's not the military's primary job to fit into what's politically correct, it's purpose is to have a combat ready force for both domestic and foreign war. I'd wish our military would stay focused on the goal: because when shit hits the fan, the rest of you will have wished they focused on their primary job too.

[Ivve]

Poor choice of words. Basically referring to the things you mentioned, male tendencies towards chivalry and all that, focus on objectives gets skewed. Question was whether difficulties arising from courtship instincts could be mitigated in the same manner as those arising from racial prejudices. If not, comparison is invalid.

That is a really complicated answer. I'll get back to it in a while when I have a better idea of how to phrase what I want to say.

[Ivve]

by lesser standards I'm refering to the fact that the physical fitness test is less taxing on women then it is men:
less push-ups(don't have to do them correctly)
less sit-ups
less pull-ups
more time for the 1.5mile run (other branches have longer runs, again women are allowed more time)

I think the attitude is probably that they're not being trained for combat or other physical activity, so why does it matter? If they were being trained to do the same shit or similar shit, the situation might be different, but as it stands there's really no reason to even hold them to the same standards. Further, who determined those standards? Probably not a woman. Who continues to accept those standards? Probably not some panel of women. It's some men who view women as a weaker sex that should not be held to the same standards.

The thing is that the argument is that women aren't being held to the same standards as men, but currently there is really no reason to bother doing so.

the navy only a few years ago purposely went through a down sizing, offering some enlistees the chance for early outs. And continues to press it's "perform to serve" platform that forces people who don't advance in rank by xxx amount of time out of the service. Army and marines are different because of infantry positions but the air force and navy are currently down sizing and aren't really looking to bulk up too heavily in numbers.

I'm only referring to infantry positions.

oh and by doubling combat personal: recruiting women to take the jobs of men and force highly qualified soldiers who's profession is not infantry to become... infantry. Because that's the reality.

We're talking about drafting people, which is presumably a situation where you need tens or even hundreds of thousands of people to fight a war on a truly massive scale. Eventually, you run out of willing volunteers. That's why there is a draft in the first place. Nobody is talking about forcing highly qualified soldiers to sit on the sidelines while a bunch of women take their jobs. We're talking about a situation in which the need for combat-capable people is so great that a draft is enacted and people who are not volunteers and perhaps would never have volunteered are forced to serve. If anyone's used the word "recruit" instead of "draft," it was for the sake of avoiding redundancy.

We could go on for decades discussion what's wrong with the military and it's approach for recruitment and why it socially struggles with the modern social identity. However, it's not the military's primary job to fit into what's politically correct, it's purpose is to have a combat ready force for both domestic and foreign war. I'd wish our military would stay focused on the goal: because when shit hits the fan, the rest of you will have wished they focused on their primary job too.

I'm not sure why you'd post this in a discussion basically about this particular topic, but I think it's pretty mistaken. The military cannot continue to exist on a volunteer basis if they don't care about their image and perception among the American people. Their budget depends on who we put in office, and if we view them negatively, we will elect people that slash money for everything from benefits to bullets. They should care very, very much about how they fit into a modern society.

And sorry for the double post.

[nervous]

I don't disagree with most of what you said here, and what I bolded is confirmation of something I did bring up in one of my earlier posts, which Senoska proceeded to tell me was made up fairytale bullshit. So, thank you.

You're welcome :D. I wouldn't mind offering more proof, and I realize that hard statistics would be more convincing than my "eyeballing" it. However, i'm working on a paper for school right now, and just don't have the time to track down statistics, which i'm not even certain the army makes available. Still, i do feel that six years of eyeballing it does give me some insight into the situation. When you have accountability formation first thing every morning, it doesn't take a genius to eventually realize that 75-85% of men are showing up each morning, compared to 35-50% of women. I don't mean to be offensive it's just the reality of the situation.

However, I don't think that being physically more prone to muscular or skeletal injuries necessarily precludes them from being useful in every single possible combat role. Nor do I think that this is the honest and full picture of why women are not integrated in a more complete sort of way. I think that some of the more legitimate concerns like the plain and simple elevated cost of having a woman in the military (again, thank you, because I really only know bits and pieces of what exactly makes females more costly to employ) kind of opens the door for less sound reasoning to be allowed, if that makes any sense. Basically, it's less likely that someone will question a statement like "We should not do this for reasons A and B" when A is irrefutably true, even if the logic for B is shaky.

I would limit my argument to point A. While there may or may not be reasons B, C, or D, i feel less qualified to comment on those. Cost alone is a pretty significant factor. Military spending makes up a pretty large chunk of our national budget, and in the current economic situation, the military is under a lot of pressure to cut costs. When you look at the issue in the context of the larger economic situation, cost is a big enough factor by itself not to need a point B.

And it is a real issue. Healthcare is a HUGE chunk of what the army spends on a soldier. It's also very expensive to train and educate a soldier, and then throw away the money spent on that training and education with a medical discharge, and females are discharged at a much higher rate than males. Here's a study a quick google search yeilded. I'm sorry i don't have time to delve further into it. I do believe you can see that the discharge rate for females was much higher than that for males under the same physical stress.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10495636

I think it's fair to extrapolate a markedly increased cost to the military based on that data.

As it stands, I just don't think people are really putting their minds to solving the problem because it's not really perceived as a problem. Women aren't sent into combat, so why bother figuring out how they can actually do it effectively, right? If the problem is that women are not capable of doing the same things as men due to lower strength and greater injury rate, then my question is whether women are capable of achieving the same results but reaching the goal in a different manner, and whether that is or can be made a feasible practice. Essentially, working smarter and not harder. The answer, "fuck it; this won't work; give up," does not seem like a reasonable one to me. When has that excuse gotten anyone off the hook? I just think women are an untapped resource and they are capable of more than the military is willing to even give them a chance to do.

I think you answered your own question earlier in the thread.

the military tends to attract some women who know they can skate by easily because they are women. They know they will never be held to the same rigorous standards as men, and they abuse the provisions that are built into the job that allow them to take time off. They don't have the sense of unity that a lot of men end up with, which makes sense in some ways but ends up setting them both apart from and often against the men in the unit. A lot of them truly truly truly embody an all-for-yourself attitude, which just doesn't work in this kind of setting.

I'm sorry to say that a majority(not a huge majority, about 60%) of women in the military embody this attitude. It's not a reflection on women at large, but as someone else in this thread said, the military tends to recruit from the bottom of the social barrel. For women, this tends to manifest itself in laziness, and a tendency to try to get out of duty. Men have their problems too, a bottom of the social barrel male i would say tends to be less lazy then his female social counterpart, but more likely to come back from a bar with his face requiring minor surgery.

What i'm trying to say i guess is the motivation isn't there. The type of motivated female that wants to go out and prove herself on equal ground with men is pretty rare in the army. It's too bad, women with that attitude tended to make excellent soldiers, there was one in particular that i was proud to work under. However, for every female like that, there are several of the "bottom-of-the-barrel" types that would take advantage of male chivalry to get out of doing work. This "untapped resource" that you speak of tends to pursue and achieve success in fields other than the military. Many of the women I attend college with would be prime examples of this untapped resource you mentioned. We don't get very many females of that caliber in the military, though. On the whole, these girls are not the types to pursue a movement with the goal of having them do hard work.

as for working smarter and not harder, as i believe someone else in the thread mentioned, if you discovered a way for females to work smarter, males could most likely adopt the same methods with even better results.

I am interested to hear your opinion of drafting women into the military as it is now. It seems to me they'd have to be placed in basically every desk jockey sort of job that even exists, and then those sad sacks would be sent off to combat. Well, maybe? I don't know how they do it in all branches of the military, but my understanding is that the Marines train everyone and make them periodically re-qualify themselves as fit for combat so that everyone can potentially do grunt shit if it comes right down to it. Maybe it's not the same. Regardless, how do you think people would feel about that? How do you feel about that?

I've been both infantry and combat service support, so I've seen both sides of the coin. Sure, we pay lip service to the idea that you are a Soldier first, and your MOS second, but it's simply not true. There's no comparing infantry training and combat service support training. Combat Service Support troops are regular people with desk jobs wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon during deployments. If you sent them into combat outside of a draft/large scale war, most would probably refuse to go and take a discharge over an MOS reclassification to infantry. If you sent them off to fight in a large scale war/draft situation, i think they would be only marginally more effective than hastily trained civilians. Requalifying on your weapon every six months does not a Soldier make.

As for a female draft, i simply don't think we have the facilities or infrastructure in place to support the influx of females such a draft would produce. Regardless of how i feel morally, it's simply not practical. Besides, historically, in world war 1 and 2, females manned(lol) factories that drafted males left empty. They made sacrifices and did work that was absolutely vital to our success. For every female you draft, you lose someone that stays behind to support from the home front, and you need many rear-echelon supporters for every Soldier on the front line. Again, i think the current system is more practical.

Also, I'd like to understand why more people don't see that as a problem. Is it really of no concern to us what the actual volunteers think? We already know the draftees are probably not that psyched to be doing what they're doing. Is it really wise to alienate and displace people who otherwise would be motivated, willing participants in a war effort? It just doesn't seem smart to me at all.

Well, again, i think you somewhat answered your own question earlier. Somewhere else in this thread. a self-described feminist said it would be silly for feminists to fight for a female draft. She said feminists didn't give a shit whether it was fair or not, feminists simply weren't going to fight for something that ran contrary to their interests.

I think most of the females in the army feel the same way. In their eyes, they get equal pay for generally doing less work than men--they've got a great gig going--why ruin it? Again, i think this is only the prevailing attitude because the army tends to recruit from the bottom of the barrel.

I guess what it boils down to is that you seem to be under the impression that somewhere there is this large group of super-motivated females who are in the military, in uniform, and itching to go into combat, fight, and do all the dirty, unpleasant stuff that even the men don't really want to do. If that group is out there, i never saw them. Those types of girls are around, but they are WAY in the minority,(top 2-3%, like i said in an earlier post) and they are all scattered around equally. there really aren't enough of them to have any major "draft women and have them serve in combat roles." type of movement. When enough of those smart, highly motivated women that i attend college with decide to make their careers in the military, things might change. until then, we're probably sticking with the status quo.



Edit: so i read the rest of your posts and for the most part i'm pretty much telling you a bunch of stuff you already know. You seem very aware of the mindset of your average military male. Really should have read everything you said/the entire thread before i posted, sorry. I still have to wonder though. you seem to know the score when it comes to your average woman in the army. I'm not morally averse to all-female units in combat, but knowing what you know about your average female soldier, how would it happen? they don't want to do it and most males don't want them to do it. the will to change simply isn't there.

[aduidarnenye]

Maybe you should actually study up on what you talk about so you don't seem foolish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men's_rights

The bibliography being more relevant than the article.

Well, dude, there you go then! I expect you'll be starting your grassroots organisation for men's rights to fight for these issues this weekend then? I look forward to hearing about your work and progress. Good luck!

did anyone mention this bullshit law; divorce = woman takes half your shit?

While it is nice for some people to believe this to be the case it rarely works out like that. Very few times in history has divorced favoured women and it is only recently, as in the last 80 years or so, where women can even think of fighting for the custody of their children when divorcing. It was also extremely difficult for a woman to seek a divorce from a husband until recently as well, while a man could divorce his wife. Until the 1960s they had to prove adultery and lay the blame on one party. The introduction of "no fault" divorce made it a lot easier for people to get divorced but while that helped women get out of bad relationships that it was legally and socially impossible previously, it also allowed men much easier access to divorce. In the 1970s there was a wave of middle-age men divorcing their middle-age wives, most of whom had spent the last 20-25 years being housewives raising children (often the "lack of productivity" was a reason these men divorced) and therefore had no work experience. The women got the kids and an alimony payment while the men got the house and cars and the ability to avoid the alimony payment because they weren't enforced very often. It's only in the last 20-25 years that things have been swinging in favour of women, and generally only upper and upper-middle class women. Middle and lower class women still generally get shafted.




As for the women in the military stuff, well, a lot of western countries are opening up their militaries to women more and more often. I think that this will be the trend as war becomes more technological. I'm sure a woman can very happily pilot a robot soldier from the comfort and non-female bone shattering easy chair in the future. Then again, I always sucked at HALO and CoD so maybe women don't do well there. I was, however, a master (mistress?) at Age of Empires and Civilisation IV, so perhaps the women will be the strategists directing the robot soldier pilot dudes about!

[joft]

as abrasively sarcastic as i've been replying to this thread, sometimes the extent of the misogyny and ignorance is just too much

it's too fucking much. what a bunch of fucking horrible apes humans are.

i give up :facepalm:

i'm going to join the human extinction movement just to fantasize about the time when there will never again be any miserable fucks like some of the people in this thread

[Darus Grey]

Well, dude, there you go then! I expect you'll be starting your grassroots organisation for men's rights to fight for these issues this weekend then? I look forward to hearing about your work and progress. Good luck!

Possibly the worst attempt I've ever witnessed.

[Draylo]

as abrasively sarcastic as i've been replying to this thread, sometimes the extent of the misogyny and ignorance is just too much

it's too fucking much. what a bunch of fucking horrible apes humans are.

i give up :facepalm:

i'm going to join the human extinction movement just to fantasize about the time when there will never again be any miserable fucks like some of the people in this thread

Wow so much anger, how are people being apes here we are just discussing. Women do have it easier, especially nowadays.