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[SalmonGod]

I was trying to be polite, but very well if you prefer it.

I was just wondering why you'd be "polite" to people who are performing acts of sexual abuse, pretty much to the extent where you reduce the seriousness of what they do (and then advocate making it easier for them to perform said sexual abuse).

I... think you're reading into it too aggressively...

More specifically, I think the intent was polite conversation, not politeness to sexual predators -- the same way that "not the nicest people" is often synonymous with "vilest scum on the planet".  Saying things like this is appropriate at times when you want to keep conversations objective and constructive, where stronger expressions can encourage things to devolve into an unnecessary hate fest on something we already mutually understand to be bad.

[ggamer]

I don't really understand the whole military gender-segregation thing. There are already female platoons (is that the right word? I'm not really sure) on patrol in foreign countries, (This is all subjective, I remember reading this in upfront or newsweek) They just aren't allowed directly into combat missions. If you already have soldiers willing to die for your country, don't just make them patrol for their entire military career...

[Vector]

Good man.

Especially for coming back into the thread and being constructive.  Welcome back!

[Siquo]

Probably because they're trying to avoid the usual issues with "if a woman wants to do something, she must become masculine and completely lose her gender identity in order to do it."

A buzzcut is not manly, it's military. Can't imagine anyone taking that hairstyle because it looks good on them, unless you're going for a "military"-look. You continue to confuse me by what is sexist or not. If men are required to cut long hair, so should women. If you exempt women, you should make the same exception for men. If you install the exemption because now there's women who want to keep their hair, while men who wanted to keep it and pleaded for it earlier and didn't get that exemption installed, things are getting hairy.

[atomicwinter]

Probably because they're trying to avoid the usual issues with "if a woman wants to do something, she must become masculine and completely lose her gender identity in order to do it."

A buzzcut is not manly, it's military. Can't imagine anyone taking that hairstyle because it looks good on them, unless you're going for a "military"-look. You continue to confuse me by what is sexist or not. If men are required to cut long hair, so should women. If you exempt women, you should make the same exception for men. If you install the exemption because now there's women who want to keep their hair, while men who wanted to keep it and pleaded for it earlier and didn't get that exemption installed, things are getting hairy.

Women are allowed to grow their hair out into a short pony tail if I recall. Isn't the point of the initial buzz cut to get rid of lice and for sanitation purposes? Long hair is a liability in hand to hand combat, you can grab it.

[Siquo]

How much hand-to-hand is there in modern combat anyway?

Also: 6666 posts and no perma-lock! Yay for progressive rage being civil!

[Duke 2.0]

How much hand-to-hand is there in modern combat anyway?

Depends on the location. Urban environments with civilians everywhere requires less firefight skills and more mob control. Nowadays most conflicts are guerrilla warfare based, with insurgents hiding in all sorts of conventionally challenging locals.

 Granted grounds troops have a helmet on which should prevent hair from being an issue. I'm still wondering what the official stance is on women in leadership positions who don't have the same standards as combat troops. There must be guidelines already in place for long hair.

[RedKing]

I don't really understand the whole military gender-segregation thing. There are already female platoons (is that the right word? I'm not really sure) on patrol in foreign countries, (This is all subjective, I remember reading this in upfront or newsweek) They just aren't allowed directly into combat missions. If you already have soldiers willing to die for your country, don't just make them patrol for their entire military career...

It's a thorny issue. Made doubly so by the lack of a defined "front line" in theaters like Iraq and Afghanistan. Female pilots have engaged in combat missions, but the military still tries to steer clear of sending females into ground combat *as combat infantry*. But the fluid and asymmetric nature of the battlefields there mean that anywhere is a potential combat zone. My brother's platoon had a female medic, who by all accounts was pretty awesome and the whole platoon respected her medical chops. But she wasn't allowed to ride shotgun with them when they went outside the wire, because it was a "combat patrol". Which kinda pissed them off, because it meant sending them without a medic. They were relying on their own basic first aid training and a field kit. Which, if you get your leg blown off...isn't going to be all that helpful. 

I think eventually it'll become a non-issue and women and men will be desegregated (except possibly in quartering...I'm not averse to leaving that like it is) and the guys who can't handle that will be strongly invited to return to the civilian world, along with the ones who can't handle serving alongside gay soldiers. Unfortunately, that's not an option right now. Once we're not fighting a war, maybe...


EDIT: The discussion reminded me of an old favorite Doonesbury of mine:
http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1990/11/18

Gave me a moment's pause when I realized it's been nearly 21 years since that strip. Why is this still an issue?

[Andir]

My brother's platoon had a female medic, who by all accounts was pretty awesome and the whole platoon respected her medical chops. But she wasn't allowed to ride shotgun with them when they went outside the wire, because it was a "combat patrol". Which kinda pissed them off, because it meant sending them without a medic.

Because she was THE medic or because she was female?  I could see a strategic advantage to letting the medic stay behind instead of putting them in a hotseat of a firefight.  (I assume movies like Blackhawk down depict the situation at times with fire coming from every angle...)  If you lose your medic, you're out a very important crew-member.

[ChairmanPoo]

Don't battlefield sanitaries lose their Convention-given safe passage if they are in possesion of weapons?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sometimes Convention-given safe passage doesn't mean all that much.

[RedKing]

My brother's platoon had a female medic, who by all accounts was pretty awesome and the whole platoon respected her medical chops. But she wasn't allowed to ride shotgun with them when they went outside the wire, because it was a "combat patrol". Which kinda pissed them off, because it meant sending them without a medic.

Because she was THE medic or because she was female?  I could see a strategic advantage to letting the medic stay behind instead of putting them in a hotseat of a firefight.  (I assume movies like Blackhawk down depict the situation at times with fire coming from every angle...)  If you lose your medic, you're out a very important crew-member.

Female. She was a 68W (Combat Medic), so in theory she should have been able to deploy with the unit beyond the wire. The whole point of a combat medic is to have trained medical care onsite in the event of a major injury. It kind of defeats the purpose if she's an hour's ride away back at the FOB. The problem is that there's a disconnect between the standing orders and the MOS regulations. Women can be combat medics. However, there is a standing regulation against deploying women on "combat missions". Hence, if the commanding officer made a determination that a given patrol mission, sortie, sweep, etc. is a "combat" mission, then the female combat medics aren't deployed on the mission.

It's fucking retarded, but it's basically a problem with the rules themselves. A lot of it depends on how much of a stickler for the rules the CO is.
She was working on training some of them as CLS (Combat Lifesavers), which is sort of halfway between grunt-level first aid and a fully-fledged medic, but then they all got rotated back home.

It should be noted that another female medic saw combat and earned a Silver Star in Afghanistan--at the age of 19.
Her "reward" was to be reassigned away from her support battalion to an HQ position, because top brass were worried she could get shot at again. 

Washington Post did a good article on it at the time, but from what I can tell the discontinuity in the regulations still hasn't been addressed. In part because you have a variety of right-wing thinktanks and interest groups lobbying against any changes in the direction of allowing women in combat.

[palsch]

...there is a standing regulation against deploying women on "combat missions". ...

Just to play devils advocate;

The one argument I've seen from boots-on-the-ground soldiers about women being kept out of combat that was convincing is that they aren't held to the same standards where it could really count - upper body strength.

Male soldiers are supposed to be able to carry or at least drag a fellow soldier out of harms way if need be and that's the basis for strength requirements. The standards for women are nowhere near as high. Even though many women soldiers could easily meet the standards, because they are not required to it's a crapshoot whether the women assigned to your unit could fill the same roles in the same way as the men or not.

Now I'm just repeating what I've heard (admittedly conservative) soldiers complaining about. Not sure of the accuracy. If anyone knows more details that would be great.

[kaijyuu]

Well then, certainly a baseline "upper body strength" limit should be enforced rather than a gender one? Move the goalposts to the same spot instead of giving different requirements.

[Vector]

Well then, certainly a baseline "upper body strength" limit should be enforced rather than a gender one? Move the goalposts to the same spot instead of giving different requirements.

Yeah, this.  I understand "you have not had the same upper body training as your male peers, and you are provisionally admitted to boot camp with lower entrance standards--but if you aren't up to snuff, you're getting put away somewhere where you can't bug us," but otherwise the standards should be the same.