[Volucris]

There already are and have been for years women in combat roles fighting front line engagements.

[EPAPressure]

Not riflemen, or women in this case. Lioness program, medics (I don't mean combat medics), etc yes we know. They aren't relied upon to be the force behind an infantry unit though. They are on FOBs and they fly all over combat zones, taking casualties. The point is they are never meant to be put in those situations that riflemen are trained to do. Twist that how you wish.

[rT159]

Originally Posted by jamest91

Out of that enture list of countries, the only one actually in a conflict right now is Israel. Within the Israeli military, 33% roughly are women. That's a pretty decent number imo.

I still do not believe a draft should comprise of women though. I believe only women who deem themselves fit to perform military combat actions should be in the military, for emotions sake.

Your point being? Women fight because they don't have enough people.

Originally Posted by StellarKnight

Not so timely:

Women in Ground Close Combat Roles

Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden (plus Australia, if I remember correctly) allow women in combat roles that "[engage] an enemy on the ground with individual or crew served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact with the hostile forces personnel."

And which of those countries has 315 million people?

[EPAPressure]

The story should read " Women in Combat Arms roles". Not combat roles. Two very different things.

[jsgnado1996]

I disagree completely. Women should most definently remain excluded from the draft. I'm also not entirely sure that women should be allowed in combat ropes either, because, let's face it, biologically, most women are not suited for the rigors of combat. Not being sexist here, just pointing out something.

[Treghc]

Originally Posted by jsgnado1996

I disagree completely. Women should most definently remain excluded from the draft. I'm also not entirely sure that women should be allowed in combat ropes either, because, let's face it, biologically, most women are not suited for the rigors of combat. Not being sexist here, just pointing out something.

Draft aside, if a woman passes the same requirements needed for a man to pass in order to join, then why should she be denied?

[ElJefe13]

Originally Posted by jsgnado1996

I disagree completely. Women should most definently remain excluded from the draft. I'm also not entirely sure that women should be allowed in combat ropes either, because, let's face it, biologically, most women are not suited for the rigors of combat. Not being sexist here, just pointing out something.

While I agree that women should not be in the draft, I'm not sure if I agree with you there. The main difference biologically (at least that's relevant to this conversation) is body fat and upper body strength. The body fat difference is negligible, and can be defeated through training. The other problem, upper body strength, was a huge factor before the invention of guns, even before the advent of breech loading rifles. But in the modern battlefield, this difference is not a factor, or not much. Women can do the same things a man can do to a point; however, I do not believe women should be drafted. Let them volunteer for combat, except in SOCOM or other special forces, but not be drafted.

[chodeyg]

You are forgetting that women have different sanitation requirements, and face different treatment in a POW situation.

[Subterfuge]

Not all of the military involves combat or even going overseas. I think about 10% actually involves combat. Rape; yes that does happen. But it would be nice to root out the corrupt **** bags from the platoons. If one tends to have bad moral character, he also tends to not have your back in combat. In fact; in my experience, these people with loose morals on my team were more of a danger to me than the insurgents.

Perhaps the existence of women in a combat team could force the team to be more professional?

[FuzzyFish]

I disagree with those of you who believe women cannot handle combat arms roles. How about this one right here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko
Seems to me women are just as well suited for combat as men.

[rT159]

Originally Posted by FuzzyFish

I disagree with those of you who believe women cannot handle combat arms roles. How about this one right here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Pavlichenko
Seems to me women are just as well suited for combat as men.

Says the guy who has never served in combat.

[FuzzyFish]

Nice try, I just got out of the military last January. Went on two deployments, you have yourself a nice day.

[rT159]

Oh? You went on two deployments? As a cook? You know how I know you weren't Infantry? You said women could hack it. Deploying doesn't mean **** if you stay on the fob.

[Seahawk6060]

Originally Posted by TheSilentAssassin

I believe men are different then women, and homogenization of gender for sake of equality is silly...But I am open to being proven wrong. I do not hold this opinion strongly.

SilentAssasin touched on it, but this needs to be explored further. Women are different from men and not just in terms of physical attributes. Why are we so, seemingly, afraid to talk about inherent "character" differences? We've gotten to be so PC about everything that we sacrifice our good sense (after all it can't be scientifically measured) on the altar of equality. Equality is now the all-conquering principle of social organization. Pop culture ideology has now trumped what we all know, at least at some primitive level, to be the unvarnished truth.

There's a reason women talk almost three times as much as men.

There's a reason why women shy away from paintball.

There's even a reason why girls don't participate in this forum.

There's a reason why girls don't typically wrestle with each other like young boys.

There's a reason girls like to play with dolls and boys don't.

Yet, somehow we convince ourselves that there isn't any reason why they can't fight on the battlefield nose-to-nose with the enemy. It always strikes me as odd when women can stand up and claim how they're more "empowered" than men, yet decry the first man that points out differences between the sexes that aren't an advantage to women. Recently 20 women were sworn into the Senate. Susan Collins (R., Maine) said that "with all due deference to our male colleagues . . . women's styles tend to be more collaborative." Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) said women in politics are "less confrontational." Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) said they are more supportive of each other. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) suggested women have less "ego." Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said they're effective because "we're less on testosterone."

In other words, men are only good for procreation and drinking beer - I don't deny these truths, but believe there may be a few more things that we're uniquely good at.

In this age of metrosexuality, masculinity is dying a slow death. There's a few of us out there that remember, in our youth, the glorious feeling of being tackled, being bloodied by the pavement and standing right back up and throwing the football again. I remember actually enjoying the pain, because somehow it made me feel more alive, heightened by the awareness that my friends around me felt the same exact thing. My friends and I loved the heat, sweat, pain, innocent cruelty, and most of all the camaraderie, a shared bonding that somehow managed to rise above the gratuitous violence we inflicted on one another. We compared bumps, scrapes, and cuts, and then laughed about them. I'm convinced there are people on this board that know what I'm talking about, just as I'm certain that some have no clue. The point is that I don't believe that in 99.9% of the cases, women have ever felt this and for that reason I wouldn't want to serve with women, in a true combat role, 99.9% of the time. Leave the up-close killing to men. We seem to have evolved the capacity for it, just as women have developed other capacities that fit their unique natures.

[Iamamartianchurch]

Originally Posted by Seahawk6060

SilentAssasin touched on it, but this needs to be explored further. Women are different from men and not just in terms of physical attributes. Why are we so, seemingly, afraid to talk about inherent "character" differences? We've gotten to be so PC about everything that we sacrifice our good sense (after all it can't be scientifically measured) on the altar of equality. Equality is now the all-conquering principle of social organization. Pop culture ideology has now trumped what we all know, at least at some primitive level, to be the unvarnished truth.

There's a reason women talk almost three times as much as men.

There's a reason why women shy away from paintball.

There's even a reason why girls don't participate in this forum.

There's a reason why girls don't typically wrestle with each other like young boys.

There's a reason girls like to play with dolls and boys don't.

Yet, somehow we convince ourselves that there isn't any reason why they can't fight on the battlefield nose-to-nose with the enemy. It always strikes me as odd when women can stand up and claim how they're more "empowered" than men, yet decry the first man that points out differences between the sexes that aren't an advantage to women. Recently 20 women were sworn into the Senate. Susan Collins (R., Maine) said that "with all due deference to our male colleagues . . . women's styles tend to be more collaborative." Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) said women in politics are "less confrontational." Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) said they are more supportive of each other. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) suggested women have less "ego." Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said they're effective because "we're less on testosterone."

In other words, men are only good for procreation and drinking beer - I don't deny these truths, but believe there may be a few more things that we're uniquely good at.

In this age of metrosexuality, masculinity is dying a slow death. There's a few of us out there that remember, in our youth, the glorious feeling of being tackled, being bloodied by the pavement and standing right back up and throwing the football again. I remember actually enjoying the pain, because somehow it made me feel more alive, heightened by the awareness that my friends around me felt the same exact thing. My friends and I loved the heat, sweat, pain, innocent cruelty, and most of all the camaraderie, a shared bonding that somehow managed to rise above the gratuitous violence we inflicted on one another. We compared bumps, scrapes, and cuts, and then laughed about them. I'm convinced there are people on this board that know what I'm talking about, just as I'm certain that some have no clue. The point is that I don't believe that in 99.9% of the cases, women have ever felt this and for that reason I wouldn't want to serve with women, in a true combat role, 99.9% of the time. Leave the up-close killing to men. We seem to have evolved the capacity for it, just as women have developed other capacities that fit their unique natures.

Balance is more important than "equality"

Chivalry demands that I would rather die than have a woman take my place in combat.

I believe I've already made these two points in this thread.

[Volucris]

We've had plenty of women already in combat positions for quite some time. You just didn't read about it on CNN. Women trend towards feminine stereotypes because that's how society expects them to be.

But alas, seahawk is an old timer and unless you're scraping your knuckles against concrete and playin' football with yer' mates, yer' jus' a god damn ***** *** ***** to him.

[rT159]

They aren't in combat, they got caught in it. That is two different things. One goes out looking to kill bad guys, the other gets caught by the bad guys. To say women are in direct combat is asinine. The want to be treated like men, hop in the octagon during a UFC match and fight a man at the same weight. You don't get to pick and choose when you want to be equal.

[Seahawk6060]

Originally Posted by Volucris

Women trend towards feminine stereotypes because that's how society expects them to be.

Women trend towards feminine stereotypes not solely because that's how society expects them to be, but because that's the way they are. It's not that all stereotypes are true, rather that some of them actually are. You're simply letting your ideology cloud the truth. It's more necessary for you to believe in this faux equality notion than it is for you to accept a fact recognized by science and thousands of years of human history.

Without trying to be too harsh, I think you're being dishonest. And it's one thing to try to convince me that there are no cognitive-based differences between men and women, but it's another to lie to yourself. The sad part is I think you actually believe it. You drank the Kool-Aid and there's no going back. Your ideology is your religion, based in faith, not in fact. Leftism isn't based on science any more than some of the extreme principles of the religious right.

I like your reference to “old timer” and “scraping your knuckles.” I guess it offers you the false sense of assurance of being right. Old = bad, new = good, truth be damned.

Here's a study, by a woman...
http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/...or/sexdif1.htm