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

[Nabterayl]

I am not aware of a 'right' to serve one's country - but there are many ways to do so that are crucial, that are not in the front line. The military are not about fairness.

No, I don't think there is such a right. Which is why I think the relevant question here is social congruity. It is bad for a society - both in terms of its stability and in terms of its combat power - to have a military that civilians don't buy into. That's why I gave the (distinctly American, I know) example of allowing non-white servicepeople. While it would be problematic to lose the non-white servicepeople currently in uniform (roughly a quarter of the service), I think it would be more problematic, at least in the long run, for America to feel like its military was a bastion of racism - even if it was a bastion of racism in the name of promoting unit cohesion and morale. A military doesn't need to be in lockstep with civilian culture, but a situation where civilians don't respect the institution is not a good recipe for maintaining combat power, let alone social stability. In America, at least, I think we're at a turning point with respect to civilian will and women in combat arms, and I think that's a very military thing to consider.

[Kirsten]

'fortunately'? so your entire argument is a smug idea that women will be as good as, but not better than, men? well done.
the idea that it shouldn't be done because it wont make the army better is ludicrous.

you seem to be ignoring this bit of that article:

"Ensuring we have clear standards for all Soldiers will ensure the best Soldiers are assigned to positions, something the Army is calling the 'Soldier of 2020,'" Sheimo said. "What we are trying to do is get the best Solders for the future. The Army's efforts across various spectrums will ensure all Soldiers have the opportunity to serve successfully."

whereas you just want men to serve successfully, not soldiers. you also ignored the bit in the article which stated that all of those jobs still closed to women are being evaluated.

the military is not just about shooting people. the military protects the interests of the people, and cannot ignore the people. as Nab says, you cannot do whatever you want to do and ignore the society you are serving.

[Denzark]

No Kirsten you are not listening. Risk versus reward. You are saying that they will perform exactly the same. That is all very well and good. That means that there is no reward in doing so - in terms of military output. But there are risks.

I have gone into them several times. If it will induce a negative change in a body of troops, even if this is due to their own innate prejudice, a commander has to weigh up if it is (for want of a better term) worth the hassle. Again, you have said there will be no improvement. So why have the hassle? Yeah OK - you can call men reacting badly to women indiscipline - and say as a good commander, just discipline my troops. And again, I say - why upset 30 by doing course of action A - including women - when I can upset 1 (or a far smaller number) by doing course of action B - excluding women?

We often take the easy option in the military. It is even a well known 'Principle of War' - Economy of Effort. Why take the risk?

If you can't include a single measurable military metric as to why it is worth doing, it probably ain't worth doing. We are required to defend democracy. The best most efficient way of doing so is not always to practise it. We go for efficiency because the worst case scenario in our line of work results in coffins.


Edit: Oh yeah - as to the military not just being about shooting people. We are debating women in front line combat roles. Funnily enough those roles do what they say on the tin. They are entirely about shooting people - or grenading them, or bayoneting them.

[Nabterayl]

If you can't include a single measurable military metric as to why it is worth doing, it probably ain't worth doing. We are required to defend democracy. The best most efficient way of doing so is not always to practise it.

I don't think that's the right way to think about this. This is not one of those cases where the military itself is asking how to improve its efficacy. That happens sometimes, and if one of the proposed solutions is, "Let's allow a group of people to serve in combat roles that will probably introduce a negative charge into those already serving in those roles," then I absolutely agree, the question is whether the added combat power is worth the potential problems it will cause.

But this particular case is one in which society is saying (or starting to say), "We want our military to look different." The military analysis of that sort of situation doesn't start with whether the proposal is good for combat power, surely. It starts with the principle of civilian control. It's fine for the armed services to say to their civilian lords and masters, "We advise against that," but not okay to say, "What you have ordered us to do is a bad idea, and we're not going to do it for your own good" - which I think is where the analysis you're promoting ends up.

[Denzark]

Actually Nabby, based on what I signed up for, if there was a nationwide referendum and 51% of the electorate asked for women to be in front line roles, I would support it with all my heart. But actually, I sadly suspect that most of society, certainly UK wide, barely gives the military any thought except for when it has to. Times like floods, firemen on strike, news reports into coffins coming back - then we're all good lads and lasses. Any other time - I'd consider us fortunate if we were thought about enough to rate ambivalence.

Actually, when you say society is starting to say, what you mean is a vocal part of the intelligentsia is starting to say 'we want our military to look different'. And this is why I am currently starting and ending with combat power. There is no need for a society's military to reflect its demographics - it is an impossibility. You can't have people without use of their legs who are in wheel chairs for example. Hey you can't have morbidly obese people weighing in at 52 stone.

I think US society in particular is more susceptible to that sort of liberal pressure hence the changes ongoing.

Hell I don't think if I sat and thought to myself I would necessarily be opposed to it - if there was absolutely no lessening of the fitness requirements - a true, level playing field. I would probably be more in favour of all female formations to start with. You can access as well as I can the reports of the first females going through USMC infantry training and how that went.

What I think offends me is being told what change is right or necessary to do, by outsiders who have no knowledge or context on which to make military decisions, adding yet another factor to consider to the already hectic life of commanders at all levels.

[Lord Asterion]

Actually Nabby, based on what I signed up for, if there was a nationwide referendum and 51% of the electorate asked for women to be in front line roles, I would support it with all my heart. But actually, I sadly suspect that most of society, certainly UK wide, barely gives the military any thought except for when it has to. Times like floods, firemen on strike, news reports into coffins coming back - then we're all good lads and lasses. Any other time - I'd consider us fortunate if we were thought about enough to rate ambivalence.

Actually, when you say society is starting to say, what you mean is a vocal part of the intelligentsia is starting to say 'we want our military to look different'. And this is why I am currently starting and ending with combat power. There is no need for a society's military to reflect its demographics - it is an impossibility. You can't have people without use of their legs who are in wheel chairs for example. Hey you can't have morbidly obese people weighing in at 52 stone.

I think US society in particular is more susceptible to that sort of liberal pressure hence the changes ongoing.

Hell I don't think if I sat and thought to myself I would necessarily be opposed to it - if there was absolutely no lessening of the fitness requirements - a true, level playing field. I would probably be more in favour of all female formations to start with. You can access as well as I can the reports of the first females going through USMC infantry training and how that went.

What I think offends me is being told what change is right or necessary to do, by outsiders who have no knowledge or context on which to make military decisions, adding yet another factor to consider to the already hectic life of commanders at all levels.

Why shouldn't a military reflect the society? It's not like modern western military forces get involved in fair fights anyway, otherwise they'd be in Russia right now. You can talk all you like about combat effectiveness and such like but really the days of a large standing army are behind us anyway, modern combat means the only issue with female soldiers would be the male soldiers attitudes. Perhaps we should just ban male soldiers from front line duties, that would solve all the problems then.

[daboarder]

No, I don't think there is such a right. Which is why I think the relevant question here is social congruity. It is bad for a society - both in terms of its stability and in terms of its combat power - to have a military that civilians don't buy into. That's why I gave the (distinctly American, I know) example of allowing non-white servicepeople. While it would be problematic to lose the non-white servicepeople currently in uniform (roughly a quarter of the service), I think it would be more problematic, at least in the long run, for America to feel like its military was a bastion of racism - even if it was a bastion of racism in the name of promoting unit cohesion and morale. A military doesn't need to be in lockstep with civilian culture, but a situation where civilians don't respect the institution is not a good recipe for maintaining combat power, let alone social stability. In America, at least, I think we're at a turning point with respect to civilian will and women in combat arms, and I think that's a very military thing to consider.

Can I just say, if you doubt the impact of this, then you only need to look at what the ADFA scandals have done to public perception of the armed forces in australia

[Nabterayl]

Actually Nabby, based on what I signed up for, if there was a nationwide referendum and 51% of the electorate asked for women to be in front line roles, I would support it with all my heart. But actually, I sadly suspect that most of society, certainly UK wide, barely gives the military any thought except for when it has to. Times like floods, firemen on strike, news reports into coffins coming back - then we're all good lads and lasses. Any other time - I'd consider us fortunate if we were thought about enough to rate ambivalence.

Actually, when you say society is starting to say, what you mean is a vocal part of the intelligentsia is starting to say 'we want our military to look different'. And this is why I am currently starting and ending with combat power. There is no need for a society's military to reflect its demographics - it is an impossibility. You can't have people without use of their legs who are in wheel chairs for example. Hey you can't have morbidly obese people weighing in at 52 stone.

I think US society in particular is more susceptible to that sort of liberal pressure hence the changes ongoing.

Hell I don't think if I sat and thought to myself I would necessarily be opposed to it - if there was absolutely no lessening of the fitness requirements - a true, level playing field. I would probably be more in favour of all female formations to start with. You can access as well as I can the reports of the first females going through USMC infantry training and how that went.

What I think offends me is being told what change is right or necessary to do, by outsiders who have no knowledge or context on which to make military decisions, adding yet another factor to consider to the already hectic life of commanders at all levels.

That's ... a distinction I can get behind only so much. If there is no lawful civilian authority telling the services what to do in this regard, then I absolutely agree it's fine for the military to weigh in on the debate with any purely military concerns it may have. If there is a lawful given civilian directive, though, then I think the military concerns and even outright objections necessarily become moot. I know in the US that directive needn't be something a majority of the enfranchised population supports in order to be lawful; I suspect the same is true in the UK. If the proper authority (say, the secretary of defense) issues the directive and the service knows for certain that most of the population opposes it, that doesn't make it any less lawful. If civilian control of the military means that a majority of civilians actually support any given directive, the system would fall apart.

I can't help but feel like a large part of the fact that we don't see eye to eye on this is that the UK doesn't have any such directive, and the US does.

Why shouldn't a military reflect the society? It's not like modern western military forces get involved in fair fights anyway, otherwise they'd be in Russia right now. You can talk all you like about combat effectiveness and such like but really the days of a large standing army are behind us anyway, modern combat means the only issue with female soldiers would be the male soldiers attitudes. Perhaps we should just ban male soldiers from front line duties, that would solve all the problems then.

A military shouldn't reflect society because its purpose is not the same as society's (the American in me would identify that as the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). If you don't think the military should be able to kick the *** of anybody lawful civilian authority instructs it to kick ... I can't agree with you, but the logical solution is to dismantle the apparatus, not to allow it to continue to consume tax dollars without providing any benefit to the citizenry. As long as you're going to have a military, it's necessarily going to have to be structured differently than the society to which it is beholden.

But that doesn't mean that it should be entirely separate from the society to which it is beholden. A certain sense of Us vs. Them is inevitable across the soldier-civilian divide, but too much of it is a very bad thing.

[eldargal]

[URL="http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/23/5640678/playing-with-privilege-the-invisible-benefits-of-gaming-while-male"]Great article on male privilege in gaming culture[/URL]. Read it before jumping to conclusions, it actually breaks down how it works and what it is quite neatly.

On the military issue, the experience in Israel and the US has demonstrated that women CAN function on front lines as effectively as men. The argument about whether or not we can is over. The argument about whether or not it is healthy is the same argument that was used against black servicemen and then LGBT servicemen and in both cases it was shown to be false and the same will happen with women.

If a person meets the physical standards to perform front line duties then they should be able to regardless of gender, it is that simple. Many women can, just like many men can't. The only difference is women have been barred from doing so and men have built this giant edifice of bull**** to convince themselves only they can do it.

[Psychosplodge]

Something else that occurs to me that may be relevant to this discussion: all the major integrations into U.S. combat soldiery have occurred in the context of actual shooting operations. I can't imagine that's an accident. Black soldiers first show up on our front lines in a major way during the 1860s, in response to a manpower crisis during American Civil War. We integrated our armed forces shortly after World War 2, after several all-colored units (of various ethnicities) had performed with exceptional, headline-grabbing heroism. Gay and lesbian soldiers were permitted during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when their sexual orientation was often an open secret in their units. Combat arms were opened to women during the same wars, when women in non-combat roles found themselves in firefights on a regular basis. None of these transitions has been seamless, but I have to imagine that the opportunity to see soldiers of the relevant excluded group actually serving in the crucible of combat operations and getting the job done has made those transitions easier than they would otherwise be.

* Yes, I know that people of color have served on the front lines of the U.S.' wars since before there was a United States, but the American Civil War was still a quantum leap forward in terms of their presence on the front lines.

I don't think its comparable to allowing mixed ethnicities to serve together. I don't think the issue is as divisive in the UK as the US, as far as I'm aware we've never had anything like the jim crow laws.
Anecdotally I've heard of several instances during WW2 where white GIs had trouble with locals after coming into pubs and causing trouble with black GIs already there.

I think the empire always employed willing volunteers from anywhere most obvious example being the gurkhas.