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Subject: Re: Women involved in combat (was Re: fu&^%$#@!@#$%^&*()@#!~!`)
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for an enlightening discussion of the state of a military with men 
serving equally with women, please see plato's _republic_, particularly 
the sections re: guardians and auxiliraries(sp?) (the auxiliraries (sp?) 
are the military men and women).

timd (timd@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM) wrote:
: >
: >   1.  They don't pass the same physical requirements [...]

: There are males who don't meet those requirements, either.  May
: be we shouldn't allow males either?

assume there is a normal distribution of strength among females and males 
(i.e., a bell curve distribution) (i believe this is not an unreasonable 
assumption), with some mean male strength and some mean female strength.  
further assume that the minimum standard of strength for military service 
is somewhere above the mean female strength as well as the mean male 
strength (i believe this is a reasonable assumption, considering what i 
see as the average strength of males and females, and my perceived 
requirement of military service).  the mean strength of females, you 
will no doubt agree, is lower than the mean strength of males.  this 
means that the percentage of females above the minimum for military 
service will be smaller than the percentage of males above this minimum.  

this difference in percentage of population above a minimum strength 
standard for military service is not really the important issue (for 
where i'm going with this, anyway -- and it is misleading as many people 
may think it necessarily means that there are fewer females who meet a 
minimum strength requirement (if you don't see the distinction 
immediately, think of the difference between a percentage of a population 
and a number from that population)).  the important thing (for my 
argument) is the number of people able to meet such a minimum 
requirement.  as the female population is larger than the male 
population, yet the percentage of females meeting the minimum military 
require is smaller than that of males, no definite statement can be made 
about which gender has more members exceeding the standard without actual 
numbers and percentages.  however, i will attempt to estimate.  i think 
that there is a large difference between the percentage of females with 
the minimum strength and the percentage of males (as a digression, i 
should perhaps say that such a strength requirement might be necessary, 
for instance, in anticipation of large packs carried long distances).  i 
think this difference is large enough that the raw number of males 
meeting the minimum requirement is slightly to significantly larger than 
the number of females.

this in itself, of course, does not imply that females should in any way 
be excluded from military service, save if they do not meet minimum 
requirements (the same would apply to males).  but it should be kept in 
mind, and i will take this as the argument that the number of females 
physically capable of serving in the military is smaller than the number 
of males.  (if you wish to disagree with this, i would ask you to 
disagree with a particular assumption or argument, state what a more 
correct assumption or argument would be, and then see how it would alter 
the conlusion  -- i made this up on the fly, and may well have 
disregarded any number of possible details).

now, i will argue practically regarding this matter, as i can see no 
ideal by which females must or must not be included in active military 
service (i should liek to know if such an ideal exists).

females should be included in the military if they increase its 
effectiveness, and should not be included if they decrease 
its effectiveness.  

an important  point:  effectiveness is a tricky thing to measure in 
itself in any situation, and the field of battle is not the place to 
evaluate it.  therefore, tests must be carried out outside battle 
situations (it is not my concern to design or specify such tests, but 
merely to note that they should be desired).  instead, i will attempt to 
provide responses/ideas as to why females may make the military more or 
less effective.

first, can females use current technology as well as males, particularly 
in a combat situations?  i assume so, as i have no indication to the 
contrary.  i assume females can pull a trigger as well as males, as well 
as perform tasks such as operate the electronics inside a tank, for 
instance.  

when it comes to the point of actually, actively making the decision to 
kill, it comes to mind that there may be a distinction between females 
and males.  i will assume there to be a distribution of readyness to kill 
among females (similarly for males, no doubt), and that this would affect 
females' appropriateness for and effectiveness in battle.  it is my 
observation that females are more emotional and are more the 
carer-nurturers than are males.  by this, i mean that the mean of 
females' emotion is greater than the mean of males' emotion, and 
similarly for caring/nurturing (anti-battle activities, perhaps?).  by 
more emotional, i think i mean that females are more likely than males to 
have emotion affecting their actions, continuing with the idea that the 
types of emotions most often expressed by the "mean female" are emotions 
not requisite with active military conflict situations.

i'm getting tired (been writing on-and-off on this for about and hour and 
a half) and i won't make the full argument.

this by no means implies that there are no females emotionally capable of 
successful and effective military conflict situations.  similar to my 
arguments for physical appropriateness, i would argue that fewer females 
are emotionally appropriate for military service (by this, i am thinking 
of hard military service, infantry fighting and grunt work -- this is not 
all there is to do, but i think this is still the core of the military; 
there are many other arguments to be made about femaes serving in other 
areas of the military, but i'll not go into that here).

i have argued that fewer females than males are physically appropriate to 
enter active-duty military service, and that fewer females than males are 
emotionally appropriate to do so.

: Also, could you give some illustrations?  Seems like a contrived
: reason...kind of like the reason Blacks can't be quarterbacks...
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                   where'd this come from??????

: >   7.  The *vast* majority of officer and enlisted personnel who have 
: >experienced combat think the idea of women in combat is crazy.  [...]

: They used to think an integrated army was crazy.

i believe the following is your logic:  officers and enlisted personnnel 
used to think a race-integrated army was crazy, and were wrong.  officers 
and enlisted now think a fully gender-integrated army is crazy.  
therefore, this must be wrong as well.  it almost seems as though you 
believe "if xxx believe yyy is crazy, then xxx are wrong," or "if 
officers and enlisted personnel believe yyy is crazy, then officers and 
enlisted personnel are wrong" (i.e., that officers and enlisted personnel 
are wrong whenever they think somethign is crazy).

a general note:  i think one-liners are good as jokes and not as 
arguments, and should be avoided in discussion.  just don't give a 
one-liner as an argument; you aren't supporting yourself in any way, you 
ignore that what may be so obvious to you may not be obvious at all to 
other people, and you make yourself out to be a non-thinking person who 
relies on dogma for your beliefs/opinions and will not hear of any 
others.  

cheers,

david

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*  David Marshburn -- marshdt3@wfu.edu	*
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