A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[eldargal]

It's complicated. There was a bad drought and famine in 1972 I think which led to a coup which overthew the guvmint and abolished hte monarchy in 73-4. That guvmint was overthrown by a secular socialist-liberal guvmint which also believed in equality for women but was unfortunately brutal in repressive in other areas which led to unrest and rebellions and military revolts across the country. Fundamentalist Islam began to creep in at this point. The US then got involved to help stop the country go Communist but it stopped working ith the Afghan guvmint after their ambassador was kidnapped and murdered in '78 and the USSR took advantage of this and invaded in 1979.

[Psychosplodge]

Sounds fun...

[eldargal]

Fun fact: A majority of the Afghanistan population and tribal parliament thing wanted to restore the monarchy because they have great respect for the institution and the late King but the US overruled it because they wanted their puppet Hamid Kazai to be president. It is possible that if they had let the Afghanistan people, you know, choose their own ****ing form of government the unpleasantness of the last 11 years may have been avoided or considerably reduced as even the Pashtun revered the monarch.

[Wolfshade]

Yes, those USians do seemed to have issues with monarchies.

[Psychosplodge]

The US state does have an institutional aversion to monarchy as a form of government...

[eldargal]

Ironic since the president is an elected monarch.

[Psychosplodge]

essentially.

[Morgrim]

On the previous 'women in military' comment: if a man is incapable of behaving around a woman I do not want that man to be given a gun, he's clearly proven he lacks the discipline and maturity to be in front line combat in the first place. You're the military, you can TEACH these things, that is what boot camp is for. Toss everyone into a same unit, slam down like a tonne of bricks on any sexual abuse or fraternisation between anyone of any gender (which they're supposed to do anyway) and train them as a unit until they stop seeing someone as a label and see themselves as a team.

Incidentally a less brutal approach of the above is taken by aussie bush firefighting teams, and it seems to work well. Given that firefighters are loved by the military as people who have already learnt have the things boot camp is supposed to teach I don't see why it wouldn't transfer.

Also if you're going to say "women shouldn't be in front line combat because they are generally not as strong as men", why are you focusing on strength? Women on average have better endurance and pain tolerance than men. Since we're not using physical strength to inflict wounds on the enemy these are more valuable skills to possess.

[YorkNecromancer]

It's like Rome. Don't call him a King, call him a Commander. Yeah, he has the power of a King, the responsibilities of a king, and dear sweet mercy, the insanity of a king, but he's totally not a king. He's an Imperator. It's totally different.

Just one of those little games we play in our heads with words to make an unpalatable truth palatable. Reminds me of a bit in one of the stories in Chuck Palahniuk's 'Haunted':

Telling some stories, Miss Leroy says, is committing suicide.

It’s here that she’d work hard to make the story boring, saying how water heated to 158 degrees Fahrenheit causes a third-degree burn in one second.

The typical thermal feature along the White River Fault is a vent that opens to a pool crusted around the edge with a layer of that crystallized mineral. The average temperature of thermal features along the White River being 205 degrees Fahrenheit.

One second in water this hot, and pulling your socks off will pull off your feet. The cooked skin of your hands will stick to anything you touch and stay behind, perfect as a pair of leather gloves.

Your body tries to save itself by shifting fluid to the burn, to dissipate the heat. You sweat, dehydrating faster than the worst case of diarrhea. Losing so much fluid your blood pressure drops. You go into shock. Your vital organs shut down in rapid succession.

Burns can be first-degree, second-, third-, or fourth-degree. They can be superficial, partial-thickness, or full-thickness burns. In superficial or first-degree burns, the skin turns red without blistering. Think of a sunburn and the subsequent desquamation of necrotic tissue—the dead, peeling skin. In full-thickness, third-degree burns, you get the dry, white leather look of a knuckle that bumps the top heating element when you take a cake out of the oven. In fourth-degree burns, you’re cooked worse than skin deep.

To determine the extent of a burn, the medical examiner will use the “Rule of Nines.” The head is 9 percent of the body’s total skin. Each arm is 9 percent. Each leg is 18 percent. The torso front and back are each 18 percent. One percent for the neck, and you get the whole 100 percent.

Swallowing even a mouthful of water this hot causes massive edema of the larynx and asphyxial death. Your throat swells shut, and you choke to death.

It’s poetry to hear Miss Leroy spin this out. Skeletonization. Skin slippage. Hypokalemia. Long words that take everybody in the bar to safe abstracts, far, far away. It’s a nice little break in her story, before facing the worst.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

if a man is incapable of behaving around a woman I do not want that man to be given a gun, he's clearly proven he lacks the discipline and maturity to be in front line combat in the first place.

This.

A man who cannot control his urges is not fit for society, let alone a professional organisation like the military, especially one where we're literally going to give him absolute power of life and death over other living beings.

I like to think slightly more highly of the men who serve than that they are little more than beasts who cannot control themselves. Because only a beast follows its instincts; a human should be able to use intellect (and in the case of the military, training) to control and focus them.

If a male soldier isn't assaulting his male peers, he shouldn't be assaulting his female peers and that is literally the end of it. A soldier who assaults his colleagues in any way is not fit for purpose.

[Horncastle]

A little late chiming in here but I wanted to comment on the Women in the military issue. Specifically the ability to carry the required gear. When my wife wants to go somewhere while I'm at work she carries two kids and all their gear (food, clothes, just as much water as was pointed out earlier) which easily weighs in at 40 kilos. I think arguing that Women can't meet the required fitness levels for front line duty is absurd. Also as a Canadian please don't brush off our military so lightly. The term Stormtrooper was coined by the Germans to describe the Canadian soldiers in WWI; and lets not forget that we made up half of the famed Devils Brigade.

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Also the point made about the rest of a unit rushing to a wounded female soldiers aid is moot. I would like to think that if a unit has such a high level of cohesion as has been pointed out an all male unit would have that they would also rush to the aid of a wounded male soldier in much the same way.