William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[carl]

Carl,

Furthermore, if it as Fuchs claims that the only distinguishing factor in military labor from civilian labor is the "combat discipline", then you will have to establish that women are not capable of achieving "combat discipline". It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

I don't know what Fuchs claims. I do know the difference between Southwest Airlines and the military is nobody at Southwest can order you to die and you can quit anytime you want and they won't put you against the wall and shoot you for desertion. So much for that.

It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me. I would agree if you added the stipulation that they can be if much special training is given and you lowered them enough, but as of now, no.

Doesn't matter if you can establish the weakest women or the strongest man or whatever. What matters is winning because losing really sucks. And if winning wars means some individuals are excluded who might be able to make it because it is just to complicated to accomadate (sic) each individual and if that ain't perfectly fair, that's tough. Ya gotta win.

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

The first is, to me, the civilian, that the ability of units to fight effectively rests very heavily upon the social dynamics of men in groups. If you have a lot of women in there, you don't have men in a group you have a mobile small town and small towns throughout history have sent the men out to do the fighting. If you put a lot of women in there you know longer have the social dynamics of men in groups, which armies know a lot about, you have the social dynamics of a small town which armies know nothing about since nobody ever did it before. I'd prefer some other country conduct that experiment in combat.

There are even more important reasons, three that I can think of, that will result in the society or nation being rent asunder if woman in combat roles is taken fully forward.

First, if women are fully involved in combat roles there will be women who don't want to go. There are always people for whom patriotism, sense of duty, unit loyalty and the rest isn't enough and don't want to go where somebody will shoot a machine gun at their soft little pink body. The solution for this with men has been, essentially, they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn. Now if a women in a combat unit doesn't want to go the easiest thing in the world for her to do is to get pregnant. She isn't going to get hung or shot at dawn. If you do decide to do that to pregnant women there will be hell to pay in the society. You could force her to have an abortion and there will another kind of hell to pay in the society. Or you could shoot her after she delivers in which case you would be shooting a mother who just gave birth which mean more hell to pay. The upshot is there is no way around that problem if you don't want to tear the society apart. Women will always have an effective option to avoid combat that men don't have, which may tear the army apart.

Next, I was taught and teach people to the extent I can that it wrong to pick on girls. You don't hit women, you hold doors open for them, you get them out of the burning building or into the lifeboat first etc. They are in general smaller and weaker and it is wrong for the bigger and stronger to pick on the smaller and weaker. If you put women fully into combat roles because they are seen as 100% as capable as the men that deferential treatment of women no longer makes any sense. There is no reason to maintain it if women are as good at warring and participate in it as fully as men. That would not be a good thing for the average women out there. It would be tearing apart the social relationship between men and women that keeps a lot of women from getting hurt.

Related to that is this. It is hard enough for leaders to order men into a battle where they know a lot of them are going to die. Unless you completely remake the deferential treatment women are afforded it will make that leader's job even harder than it is now, so hard I think it would affect combat decision making. Would Adm Callaghan have been as likely to send the ships in against the IJN battleships? Maybe, but maybe not and the maybe not is a big thing.

Finally if women fully participate in combat roles and nothing is excluded there is no justification for excluding them from a draft and placing them into combat units. None. I was listening to the radio the other day and Mark Helprin was on. The subject of females being drafted came up and he said if that happened as far as he was concerned the social contract regarding military service was null and void and he would take his girls into the mountains and fight anybody who tried to take them. I believe he isn't the only one who thinks that. Considering the social turmoil drafts have caused in the past when only sons were taken, I can't image how bad society would be torn apart if they came after daughters.

As far as I'm concerned, none of this is worth giving the articulate and ambitious the opportunity to have their cards punched with the combat command punch.

[Compost]

It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.

It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me.

Average possibly but the underlying qualification is that an average squadron pilot may be ‘special’ to a particular type of squadron. A military pilot has to wear a helmet laden with life support, comms and sensor gear. The weight and inertia of that gear produces transverse loads during head turning and even small movement within seat restraints. One result is that fast jet pilots are especially liable to develop neck and back strains. Some pilots become disabled by the strains. Basic neck strength may not be formally measured but is nonetheless a criterion for determing suitability to become a pilot. Have heard it suggested that on the grounds of cost – for ab-initio test and for medical compensation – women be accepted only for training as pilots of ‘slow’ fixed-wing aircraft.

So just how different is female musculature ? The classic example is that of African women who carry heavy and bulky loads on top of the head directly above the spinal column. That might be described as upper body strength but does not indicate any capability to rapidly handle two 20-litre jerrycans, or even a single 25kg artillery shell.

A fast way for anyone to become a social outcast in a work environment is – other attractions notwithstanding – showing that he or she is not able to do the job.

[former_0302]

The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.

I'm going to pile onto Compost's point here a little bit. Our physical standards are misleading in several ways. Let's take the USMC's PFT as a benchmark, since it's what I'm most familiar with. The perfect score for a male Marine is achieved by doing 20 pullups, 100 crunches, and running three miles in 18 minutes or less. The perfect score for female Marines is currently achieved by doing a flexed-arm hang for 70 or more seconds, 100 crunches and running three miles in 21 minutes or less. They're trying to change the female standard to pullups, and when they do, the perfect score for them will be eight pullups.

What, however, does this test exactly quantify? I said upthread somewhere that performance on the PFT has little in common with being a good infantry Marine. As to why, Napoleon said it best:

“The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second; hardship, poverty and want are the best school for a soldier.”

The PFT does absolutely nothing to measure this. NOTHING.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

[Compost]

I'm going to pile onto Compost's point here a little bit. Our physical standards are misleading in several ways. Let's take the USMC's PFT as a benchmark, since it's what I'm most familiar with. The perfect score for a male Marine is achieved by doing 20 pullups, 100 crunches, and running three miles in 18 minutes or less. The perfect score for female Marines is currently achieved by doing a flexed-arm hang for 70 or more seconds, 100 crunches and running three miles in 21 minutes or less. They're trying to change the female standard to pullups, and when they do, the perfect score for them will be eight pullups.

What, however, does this test exactly quantify? I said upthread somewhere that performance on the PFT has little in common with being a good infantry Marine. As to why, Napoleon said it best:

“The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second; hardship, poverty and want are the best school for a soldier.”

The PFT does absolutely nothing to measure this. NOTHING.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.

Napolean’s statement and perfect PFT tests are straw targets in every sense of that term. Napolean may have stressed fortitude and courage as his most and 2nd most important criteria. He did not declare that physical attributes were of zero or little concern.

Similarly obtaining a perfect PFT score is not a prerequisite for recruiting or posting to most parts of the USMC. Passing at some level is - with the possible exception of ‘elites - good enough to indicate current and future acceptable performance in that particular criterion.

It is of course possible to obtain a different type of perfection. Totally discard a prerequisite and hence accept absolutely every applicant as suitably qualified. Less perfectly, reduce a current standard and accept a wider span of applicants.