golden_rivet
GCM

No one has yet pointed out the blindingly obvious thing that lots of women are injured and killed in combat - we call them civilians or even collateral damage if we are a really sick journo/politician/goldbraid.
At the risk of repeating myself I'll just say (again) that exactly the same arguments re physical/psychological competence were in the past used to stop non white men from serving and/or bearing arms that are today used in the debate over women in the front line and society got over that one (justabout).
For whatever reason either accident or design or biological inability lots of women don't have children, a phenomenon that is far from new. We saw it in the first half of the last century when a generation of men was wiped out by WW1 and we saw it towards the end of the century when the pressures of capitalism made it harder and harder for people to afford to have children.
'Experts' constantly bleat on about the fact that children need fathers quite as much as they need mothers in relation to crime statistics and teenagers but statistics - as we all know - can be made to prove anything one wants.
Bob Stewart was on the radio today pointing out that in his opinion the only difference between men and women in combat was that when women were injured that the men were often distracted from the job in hand by the question of looking after the woman in a way that wouldn't be quite the same were the injured person a man. Whilst this argument holds some water I think the recent case of the helicopter rescue of the injured soldier (in Iraq I think) rather contradicts this and I believe research has shown that men have always 'cared' for each other in combat situations (obviously in a rough tough manly sort of way :lol: ) that this cohesion is what holds together small groups of fighting wo/men and is far from new. Even he concluded though that this tendancy of men to want to 'care' for women in this way would probably disappear over time.
Any more daft reasons you want knocking on the head????? :lol:
Seriously though - I suspect that it may be just a matter of time but it will be interesting to see if the same debate is still going on in 50 years time pity I won't be around to find out.
At the risk of repeating myself I'll just say (again) that exactly the same arguments re physical/psychological competence were in the past used to stop non white men from serving and/or bearing arms that are today used in the debate over women in the front line and society got over that one (justabout).
For whatever reason either accident or design or biological inability lots of women don't have children, a phenomenon that is far from new. We saw it in the first half of the last century when a generation of men was wiped out by WW1 and we saw it towards the end of the century when the pressures of capitalism made it harder and harder for people to afford to have children.
'Experts' constantly bleat on about the fact that children need fathers quite as much as they need mothers in relation to crime statistics and teenagers but statistics - as we all know - can be made to prove anything one wants.
Bob Stewart was on the radio today pointing out that in his opinion the only difference between men and women in combat was that when women were injured that the men were often distracted from the job in hand by the question of looking after the woman in a way that wouldn't be quite the same were the injured person a man. Whilst this argument holds some water I think the recent case of the helicopter rescue of the injured soldier (in Iraq I think) rather contradicts this and I believe research has shown that men have always 'cared' for each other in combat situations (obviously in a rough tough manly sort of way :lol: ) that this cohesion is what holds together small groups of fighting wo/men and is far from new. Even he concluded though that this tendancy of men to want to 'care' for women in this way would probably disappear over time.
Any more daft reasons you want knocking on the head????? :lol:
Seriously though - I suspect that it may be just a matter of time but it will be interesting to see if the same debate is still going on in 50 years time pity I won't be around to find out.