Topic: Women in the military - Over emotional and controlled by their hormones

[Desert Fox]

[Puts on flame retardant suit]

Alright, I don't believe that but I hear both quite a bit against women serving in front-line roles.
Has there been any studies done to refute these arguments?

[Ice Wolf]

Oh man! - After my last feminist thread, I can see this going wild!

[pandamonium]

Guh.

[Caffiene]

Has there been any studies done to refute these arguments?

What arguments?

The thread title mentions emotion and hormones, but without evidence or logical support they arent really "arguments" in any serious sense. To quote Hitchens, "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence".

Id need to hear a good statement of the arguments to be able to consider possible refutations.

[Shadow Of A Doubt]

As opposed to men who have no hormones whatsoever.

[Desert Fox]

I agree with you, Caffeine,
The problem is that somebody will trot out an anecdote and you are fighting an uphill battle even though they dodn't have any evidence

Also, this was brought up



My problem is that the study is tiny, we don't know what selection criteria was used, and many of the other conclusions I question as well.

[ting-bu-dong]

How are recruits defined? Anyone who signs up? Anyone who makes it through training? Some other way?

Is there any reason why the sample size has to be so small? I would have thought the US army would keep statistics on this sort of thing meticulously.

[Demosthenes]

Still seems like a bizarre concept not allowing Women as front-line troops.
They may be marginally less physically able then men, but that's completely insignificant when firing a rifle.

[Caffiene]

They may be marginally less physically able then men, but that's completely insignificant when firing a rifle.

+1

For military service in general, we arent talking about something that takes the best of the best. All recruits must meet certain fitness requirements to be elligible, and its not a zero sum equation where a woman in the military pushes out a man who would otherwise have gotten in... If a woman meets the fitness requirements then your military force is one person larger than it was before.

Even if we accept their position that on average women in the military are physically weaker than the men, they would still make up the lower end of the scale of people who are judged fit and strong enough to be of service.

It doesnt matter if somebody is "at a disadvantage" in a particular task if they are still capable of satisfactorily completing the task. I might be able to march 10 miles while someone else can march 15, but if we're only ever called on to march 5 miles then its not relevant.

[Hanes]

Also, this was brought up

[Caffiene made the same argument I was going to.  Read below if you would like a more profanity-laiden response than his crafted reply]

(click to show/hide)

Here's why this argument is fucking retarded.  Say, for the sake of argument, that it's true that the average woman is much less phisically capable than the average male.  Does that mean that we should exclude female olympic athletes from the military, but accept your average neckbeard?  If the enterence qualifications are the same for each gender*, then those that can pass muster can fucking pass; who cares about anything else?  Morons, that's who.

*I don't know if they are, but it makes sense to me that they should be, if/when we're expecting the same results from everyone.

[Citizen Skeptic]

I'd rather have the average male next to me than the average female in a fight. I'd also like to have the average male trying to rescue me from a fire than the average female. Basically, to accomodate the average woman, I'd have to give up some personal security as the average male.

That said, it shouldn't be about the average woman, it should be about anyone that can meet the same standard. The standard should be dictated by the job requirements, not the gender of the potential applicants. While I don't know a lot of average women I would want next to me in a fight, I can think of a few I definitely would!

[341gerbig]

"Why don't you prove that god doesnt exist"

[341gerbig]

I'd rather have the average male next to me than the average female in a fight. I'd also like to have the average male trying to rescue me from a fire than the average female. Basically, to accomodate the average woman, I'd have to give up some personal security as the average male.

That said, it shouldn't be about the average woman, it should be about anyone that can meet the same standard. The standard should be dictated by the job requirements, not the gender of the potential applicants. While I don't know a lot of average women I would want next to me in a fight, I can think of a few I definitely would!

I would agree with this if it was the "average female" who were sent into a fire to rescue me. But the fact remains for fire-fighters, if you cant do the job, you don't get the job. For males and females alike, if you cant carry the 180 Lb dummy through the obstacle course, you dont get the job.

So i would be fine having the average female fire-fighter saving my chard ass.

In a fight? Sometimes id rather have a female, depending on the female, some of them can be god dammed vicious

[Neon Genesis]

Maybe we wouldn't have so many drone strikes killing innocent civilians and soldiers peeing over the dead bodies of soldiers if we had more emotional people in the military? 

[MikeHz]

They're talking average. I've known women at the gym who could pick up the average man and throw him over their shoulders.

Women have served with distinction in combat in many venues, usually auxiliaries in cases of a shortage of men. If qualifications for a combat position is mission defined, then I can't see any rational reason for disqualifying someone based on gender.

On the other hand, if we are going to disqualify a particular sex based on who is best for a mission, then men ought to be excluded as combat pilots. Women are generally smaller, and more easily fit into cockpits and handle rapid acceleration better than do men. And, they can be extremely aggressive in combat--as the Germans found out when they faced Russia's "night witch" pilots in WWII.