Should Women Fight In The Infantry?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9823312/Army-has-dropped-fitness-standards-to-allow-more-women-to-join.html

In the continuing quest for sex equality, why should it be only men who have to put their lives at risk?

/// Major Judith Webb said "women should not be given roles in infantry units where they would be expected to “close with and kill the enemy at close quarters”. ///

/// I don’t think we should have women in infantry roles. By opening it up to women, are women shooting themselves in the foot? Because they are not going to be able to have those standards,” she said. ///

/// She argued that it still shocked people when a woman soldier died in war zone. ///

/// “The British public still do not accept women should be in such roles. ///

[emmie]

your idea by the way of opposing sides say in WW2 wasn't true either, the Germans were eventually defeated, with the combined forces of USA, Britain and many more besides, they didn't negotiate a deal with Germany, Hitler was already dead by his own some time before. the deal that was broached was between Stalin, Churchill Eisenhower, which eventually halved Germany into East and West, hardly a good deal for the German people, not sure i have a great deal of sympathy though, for what it's worth.

And Japan only surrendered because the Americans did the unthinkable, and dropped bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Most historians, military minds believed it saved millions of lives in the longer term, as Japan was gearing up for a long drawn out land war, not something the Americans wanted.

[Zeuhl]

/as Japan was gearing up for a long drawn out land war, not something the Americans wanted. /

Nor us

My father was part (RAF) of the assembling invasion force onto the main islands.

It would have been a bloodbath

[emmie]

am aware it would have been, and perhaps i should have added the coalition forces didn't want it. The rough estimate was two million dead on the American side alone, that would have been catastrophic. Whilst i do not condone what they did on dropping the bombs it appeared to have had the desired effect, vile as we have seen, the loss of innocents is always wrong.

[naomi24]

Andy-hughes, // it has ended with peoiple meeting together and talking out a solution - i simply think we should start - rather than end - at that point.//

As I said, nice idea – but it won’t work with the people we are currently in conflict with. You erroneously assume that their mind-set works along similar lines to your own – but it doesn’t. Life for them is cheap, death in battle against the infidel (aka us) is glory, they don’t seek peace, and they don’t give a damn what we think. Make no mistake, whether our troops are in their countries or not, their feelers are spreading and their war against the west will only end when they have achieved ultimate victory – which hopefully they will never do. And before anyone says that’s alarmist, it isn’t. They are not fighting the war you think they’re fighting.

Em, I’d be a liability on the front lines. Hopeless!

[magsmay]

People need to realise that 'equality' in the sexes was never meant to be 'sameness'. Equality in the right to Vote and the right to have all the Legal rights men have was a huge step forward but did not and never will mean that woman are the same as men. Females are physically and psychologically different from Males and this cannot change to a great degree. Females act and react differently from Males in stressful situations -their minds are hard-wired to react differently -this is not a put down for Females -in some cases woman are far more suited to stressful situations than men. Females have to deal with menstruation, monthly fluctuations in hormone levels, which can be addressed with medication which would have to be taken daily on a battlefield. Psychologically woman deal with killing in a different way - for a lot of woman killing another human being is killing someones son (or daughter|) and they empathise with that more than perhaps a man would. This can be trained out of a soldier of course, buts its 'after the fact' that the problems may occur -we see a lot of PTSD on return from front lines with males and this could be even worse or present differently in Females. I strongly believe that Females should not be allowed to be front line infantrymen - They can be deployed in other equally important roles within the armed forces.

[andy-hughes]

magsmay - thanks for getting us back on track - naomi24 and I were in danger of tootling off down a side-road of ethics!