ZOMBIE FORUMS

Say tomorrow North Korea decides to take over South Korea while the US is occupied. And China sends military aid in the form of troops and weapons, but not the overt support of the government of China. We not only go in but institute another draft. Lotto-Style again.

What are your opinions?

Studies by the military have shown that men are more likely to die on average when women are in their unit. They go out of their way to protect and take of the woman, reguardless of actual combat competance. This has been dubbed "the father factor" by psychologists.

I feel that until this social issue can be addressed, I'd rather we endanger our troops less and either seperate male and female units (a practical impossibility in war, no?) or delegate each gender into roles that don't put them together in combat.

My 2 cents. Comment on them as you wish.

-MiB

Advocating the tactical point of view as always, it is simple and good military sense to make full use of whatever manpower that you can find. Only countries with vast resources like USA have the luxury of fielding a single-sex fighting force.

I think they should be included but in male or female fighting units, before integration, during WWII and Korea, we had Black and White units. It isn't even hard, much less impossible to seperate them, then the Phrase "fighting men and women" would be appropriate, instead of an empty PCism. We still don't put Women in infantry units. We damn well should. Anyway, after a while segregated, the men would stop thinking of the women as needing protection and realize that they have an M-16 too. Then they'd stop getting themselves killed.

I think that Physical fitness requirements should be the same too, same number of pushups etc.

Sometimes they have increased pain tolerance, sometimes not. Alot of women I know are the biggest sissies physically you can imagine. Some are the toghest people I know, pain tolerance is psychological, not a physical trait.

Simple enough solution Ryven. Exempt single (either because of the draft, or whatever) parents from the draft. After all, we already exempt a number of other people, realistically.

Non-sexist and workable.

I don't pretend to be a military analyst. Because of this, my opinion on the subject is this: Whatever the decision is, it should be made after some serious studies of combat effectiveness of all-male, all-female, and mixed-gender combat units. The ultimate goal should be improving the fighting force, not following some politically correct tangent about proving that women are equal to men.

In my opinion, if the women cannot reach the current (male) standards, they should not be accepted. If they can, and can be integrated into the units without loss of overall fighting effectiveness, they should be included and drafted.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I do mean that seriously, and do it with facts), but wouldn't an army of, say, twice the size be more effective, generally?

Taking only males takes skilled workers out of the workforce much quicker than distributing it equally among the genders.

If I am not mistaken the draft was deemed unconstitutional. Besides why have a large army full of less enthusiastic men and women when you can have a smaller one full of people who are eager to fight for their country.

In my opinion women should be allowed in, but standards should not be lowered in the least. The military should have standards that apply across the board.

But in my opinion the military is excessively large as is, so I am for much stiffer mental and physical requirements.

Sorry, you are very mistaken, the draft was never declared unconstitutional by the Supreme court or any other authority.

Though on paper having seperate units seems okay, in fact units get mixed up all the time, ne? The problem still stands. Clay, you can't just "tell them" not to act instinctively. Its been programmed in really tight by society, not anything you can usually mess with.

-MiB

A little time will hammer the dents out. The US govt. doesn't care about regular soldiers anyway. They spend billions on Patriot missles that don't work and give the soldiers a rifle made by mattel. They bring people back from Vietnam and say, "Well you're home, I guess everything is ok now. Shell shock? Just a myth!"

If people act inappropriately and get themselves killed in a combat situation, they are being trained poorly.

On a similar subject, girls in physical education classes generally have lower standards of fitness, while people with genetic disorders (asthma, obesity, etc.) do not. And yet, in other classes where females are generally better (not sure which), there is no such treatment. Discuss.

For one, I don't think people should be held to lower standards than the rest of us because they are obese. It would be difficult to prove that such a problem was genetic, to begin with. It could be, or it could just be that the family does not make a habit of exercising, and/or tends to eat certain types and amounts of food that would result in obesity. Furthermore, holding people to lower standards for such a reason could very well result in more obesity.

Asthma is a different case entirely, and there should be some allowances for those who suffer from the condition, if necessary. But, in all of the gym classes I have participated in, those with asthma had the option of being held to different standards, depending on the severity of the condition.

However, most asthmatics that I have known have been in as good, or better, shape than me. So I'm not really sure that, except in a few exceptional cases, any concessions need to be made in these cases either.

In an ideal world, females and males would be held to the same standards in gym classes. But, in that ideal world, I would have failed my gym classes.

So, while I do think it is wrong to make distinctions for gender in gym classes, I hardly lament the fact that it was not the case in my school.

As for classes that females, in particular, do better than males, I can't think of any either.

Actually (at least in mice), there is a specific gene which can lead to, or dramatically increase the instance of, obesity. And I don't know too many asthmatics, but those I do are in decent shape as well. So maybe that isn't a good example.

An interesting part of it for me was that one of my PE teachers was a woman, who always talked about how girls should work harder than the majority did in PE, but had even more different standards.