Do you think women should be in armed combat roles in the US military?

Yes.

Part of the Q is why or why not.

1) Fuck yes
2) Fuck no
3) Because women can be excellent warriors

I don’t think anyone should be in armed combat roles.

This is that sort of idiotic liberal feminist view of putting women in the same deranged positions of exploitation and authority as men, instead of doing away with those structures in the first place.

^ Very much this.

The IDF women who record themselves doing TikTok dances while murdering women and children and doing genocide is not a feminism that needs to exist. Just like movements that try to make the military more environmentally-friendly.

Yes
No
Women often make better decisions in stressful situations.

Yes because the goal of equality is equal opportunity. If women choose to join the military, they should be eligible for combat assignment like anyone else.

They are, IMHO, just as likely to make effective combatants as men (many of whom, BTW, aren’t automatically good at it just because they have a penis).

This is to say nothing of a woman’s ability to lead, boost morale, or be a strategist. They can certainly excel in those areas too.

Yes, they can be in combat as long as they meet the physical and mental standards required.

Maybe in a country of only a few million people one could argue it could significantly hurt the future of the population to lose women to war, but Israel is less than 10 million and woman are in combat and very good soldiers.

I think in the US another question that might come up is should women be included in a draft and forced to be in combat?

Anyone who says “yes” does not understand just how fucking brutal combat really is. The fact is women will mostly slow down infantry. That is biology on average here. It’s just not for them, sorry. Facts can be offensive to some. That said, there are places where women excel, they make superb jet and drone pilots as well as snipers. Why we would subject anyone to any of this is beyond me though. Fuck war. One of the few times I agree with @Kropotkin and @hat

^I was worried you were going to say women belong in the kitchen.~

@Blackwater_Park If you set physical requirements and women pass, they would be just as good. It’s just that there will be fewer women who pass. What I wouldn’t do is lower the bar of the physical requirements. In terms of “subjecting” people to it, they have a choice. The military is voluntary.

@Caravanfan Yes, that’s true. There will be an extreme minority of women who make it through that filter. A great deal of men get cut, so we are looking at perhaps the top ½ of 1% of women. The military is not necessarily voluntary. It is when times are good and we get enough volunteers. Things are not always that cushy.

I was in the Navy when women were really pushing for equality. At the time there was a rule that said women cannot serve on a combatant vessel. The reasoning was that women on a ship can add a distraction…men are interested in women and women are interested in men. On a combatant ship that was deemed to be too much of a challenge…you don’t want people distracted when the bullets and missiles start flying. I also believe there was still some chivalry left in the military at that point and people didn’t want their women put on the front lines, in harm’s way.

There were many women in the Navy at that time. They mainly worked on bases or on support vessels. There were indeed some issues that arose out of that. I heard of one girl that was raped on a ship that was in port for repairs. Another was a girl that started her own little prostitution ring on board a supply ship. These are not things you want in a combat ready organization.

That being said, I all for equality as long as it is equal. Same standards applied to all. Not separate standards for women to make it easier for them, nor lowering standards for everyone to help women meet the standards. The point of the military isn’t social, it is one purpose: to staff and control a top notch fighting force. If you have a fighting force that isn’t trained the best it can be or where half of it is trained to a lower standard, you are threatening the ability of the military to fill their role.

@Blackwater_Park We’re saying the same thing, more or less. Navy Seals have a rigorous physical requirement that no woman has been able to pass, and it’s been open to women since 2016. No standard lowering there, nor should there be. If a woman can pass it, they can join.

So, if I understand correctly, in the military we seem to all agree men have a natural physical advantage on average, and it is more difficult for women to pass the physical requirements for combat and special forces like Navy Seals. Got it.

@jonsblond LOL no. The armed forces have requirements both physical and mental. They stratify people based on combinations of both. They won’t let a high-IQ, high-potential female go to waste serving slop in the mess hall. They’ll put her where her abilities can be best utilized. One thing about the armed forces, they’re not racist or sexist. They are discriminatory on age, handicap and with IQ though. If you score below a certain level on the ASVAB they know that they’ll be unable to teach you to do anything useful. Apparently, that correlates to an IQ of around 85. They only let in a percentage of people who score just a little higher. If you’re handicapped or out of shape it’s a no also. It’s not about being fair, mean or nice, it’s a just a cold, calculating machine.

Judging by the responses, this is meant to ask if women should be infantry, or part of a ground force.

Women would be better used, elsewhere, where they could excel.
A ruck sack, can weigh in around 120 lbs. That’s a LOT to ask of a woman of similar weight. It would just punish the women, for nothing.
I would be equally concerned about their ability to pick up and carry a wounded man, or heavy weaponry, ammo, etc.

Of course there are women who would be more physically capable than some men, but that wouldn’t be the norm.

As long as they can pass the necessary steps, I’m OK with it.
But it’s not very rational.

@Blackwater_Park When I was looking at the military, the recruiters had a screening test. Sort of a mini version of the ASVAB. When a candidate took the test, they would grade it right then and tell you what the results were. They would also tell you what jobs you would most likely be good at BUT they also said you could sign up for whatever you want to do. All along the process of going into the military they would urge you but not limit you to go for certain jobs. Some of the higher end jobs had other screening tests you would have to pass to qualify. Example: I went into the nuclear field. I had to get at least a certain score on the ASVAB and then they gave me the Nuclear Field Qualification Test. The NFQT was a test that covered some of the higher math and science fields you might have had in High School…geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, etc. There was a possible of 78 points on the test, you had to get at least a 42 to pass. The nice part was that the ASVAB and NFQT were both done before you signed all the paperwork so if you decided you didn’t want to do that, you could walk away with no downside.

All the classifications you could go into also had schools that you had to pass as part of your enlistment. Failure at that point meant you couldn’t be in that field, but were still stuck in the Navy. That was a downside, but it also could be an incentive to study, study, study…to take it seriously. And you are correct…it was about being fair and getting what they wanted out of an enlistee. It wasn’t about being nice or mean. It was set standards with little to no wiggle room on them.

@seawulf575 Reality becomes demonstrably objective when failure is not an option. Gotta respect that. We need more of it.

^Aye-aye. The only drawback I saw when I was in was, ironically, in the nuclear power field. There was a push by feminists to allow women into the nuclear power field. They navy had excluded them because of their rule of no women on combatant ships. There are no nuclear ships that aren’t combatant. But eventually the navy caved and let women into the nuclear field. They just never removed the limitation on the combatant ships and the women didn’t want them to. So every woman that went through the training program was guaranteed a shore-duty billet or on something like a submarine tender (which is basically shore-duty). Those are the prime positions for all nuclear personnel in the Navy. You get to be home every night, don’t have to be away from home for months at a time, get more opportunities later on because things like being an instructor is viewed as being prestigious. So it wasn’t equality the women got, it was preferential treatment. It caused a fair amount of animosity towards women in the nuclear field. As I said, as long as it is all equal, I have no problem with women in the military in combatant roles.

@hat More. female. drone. pilots. LFG!

Sure, if they are capable of it. The physical differences between men and women will likely result in fewer women passing the bar, as it were. Though I’m with @hat and @Kropotkin that I don’t think this needs to be a priority for various other reasons. But I also don’t think women should be banned simply for being women (same goes for gay or trans soldiers). If they’ve joined the military and they can do what’s expected of them, then so be it.

jca2 asked, “Part of the Q is why or why not.”

Determining who should be in the U.S. military and what role should they have should be determined wholly on their physical and mental abilities without assumptions and presumptions based upon gender.

@Bill1939 No argument. However we all have to be honest. Example: if a woman goes out to be a navy seal, you don’t go into the navy as the rating of “seal”. You go in as a machinist mate or a bosun’s mate or some other rating and then you qualify as a seal. The downside is often that the training a person gets in one of the other ratings is a bit abbreviated as they expect you to learn it in your future position (as a seal). So if you fail out as a seal, you are likely going to get put wherever the Navy wants to put you and you will be expected to meet the performance of that position. It can be a bit uncomfortable for those that person that is thrown into that position. And at that point, it isn’t honest to say you were being targeted because of your gender or your sexuality or your race or anything other than you didn’t make the grade.