Women?

[SgtMuhammed]

Strange how women have so much easier a time getting little favors like that.

[Lee]

Oh please, women are not in front line combat units because they are a liability,

among other reasons. Abstract "test" results on paper mean nothing.

Take any infantry regiment of women that goes through full training, etc.

and put them up against a skilled regiment of enemy infantry and they'd get

slaughtered. Hollywood nonsense aside...

CM should stick to reality, PC (not the hardware) has no place in it.

[Thomm]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

Strange how women have so much easier a time getting little favors like that.

As long as you consider being taken along on a German submarine in 1943 a favor ...

[akd]

Originally posted by Lee:

Oh please, women are not in front line combat units because they are a liability,

among other reasons. Abstract "test" results on paper mean nothing.

Take any infantry regiment of women that goes through full training, etc.

and put them up against a skilled regiment of enemy infantry and they'd get

slaughtered. Hollywood nonsense aside...

CM should stick to reality, PC (not the hardware) has no place in it.

I think you should say that to this lady's face:

Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle.

When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured.

Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester was awarded the Silver Star.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2005/20050616_1745.html

[Colin]

Okay so what's this? We have 3 maybe 4 examples of women performing well in combat. How many women are over there?

Now I'm not saying they can't be good soldiers, they are not as effective in combat as men. If they were, they would have been used more.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

If CMSF is going to show a lot of combat support troops, which include MPs and some supply, then there have to be women. If BFC decides to stay below battalion level with all possible forces then there probably won't be any women unless they start letting them be cooks. Even female medics in a line unit would be very unlikely.

I think this is the most relevant point. Most of the missions involving female soldiers discussed here seem to be outside the scope of CMSF, as I understand it.

[Peter Cairns]

I seem to remember in one post Steve mentioning something along the lines of a convoy scenario, ( although it might have been when discussing the new victory conditions for CMx2 being more complex).

Either way if they aren't in as a graphic option like "coloured" faces, in the game scenarios, then you can't put them in your own scenarios other,

it's like the M1A2 debate, they aren't a major part but a lot of people would like them in as they might play a secondary role in a Stryker scenario, but being in lets you use them in QB's and future scenarios.

I am not directly comparing female soilders with M1A2's although I have seen some pretty rough ones in the British army.

Peter.

[SgtMuhammed]

There are some real lookers in the U.S. Army as well.

[Lee]

akd: Well, for one thing, the largely inept islamic terrorists running

around Iraq don't qualify as trained professional soldiers, the only thing

most of them have going for them is blind suicidal fanaticism, other than that,

they suck.

Secondly, taking out a few bad guys in a short shootout is not the same

as being able to hold up in an intense prolonged battle against skilled

enemy soldiers, plus with hand-to-hand combat as a possibility. Can you imagine

what would have happened if an all woman force had to invade Iwo Jima and take

it from the japs? The word massacre comes to mind...

Thirdly, it is possible that on very rare occasions a woman might come along

that could handle combat, but it would be just that, a very rare exception.

Completely unlike 99% of women. But the military isn't based on fluke exceptions,

but on day to day reality. And I can only imagine what a gal that mean

would look like... hehe

Plus it's dishonorable to expose women to violence like that. This is the reason

one should never strike a lady, whereas it's perfectly fine for two guys

to duke it out to settle a difference if it comes to that. On the other hand,

anyone with a brain knows you don't viciously beat a girl just because you get

into a big argument with her. Women should be protected from violence,

not be sent out to be brutally maimed, raped and killed.

[Popfreak]

Originally posted by Colin:

Okay so what's this? We have 3 maybe 4 examples of women performing well in combat. How many women are over there?

Now I'm not saying they can't be good soldiers, they are not as effective in combat as men. If they were, they would have been used more.

Marine line units i.e. grunt companies routinly take WM's along with them on patrol, and the WM's routinly engage the enemy with their rifles just as the grunts do. Is there alot of it I would guess not, but to say what you did is wrong. My leatherneck magazine every month seems to show more and more women assigned to FSSG units getting in the trenchs with the male Marines.

[Lee]

Popfreak: And thus we see yet another example of the corruption of our society...

I saw a news report that said that male U.S. soldiers (at least some) are

being forced to listen to staged audio tapes of women being tortured, screaming

in agony, begging for mercy, etc. so that their natural instinct to

protect american women from violence, and the mental pain that would ensue

if they could do nothing to stop it at the time, would be desensitized.

This is simply disgraceful behavior. But it's what happens when you

let the feminists (courtesy of Bill Clinton) try to force social engineering

on the military.

[Dogface]

dumbass

[SgtMuhammed]

All other things asside, the biological reason you don't have female infantry is because a population can lose most of its males and still survive. Wipe out a large portion of the females and your civilization is doomed.

Ok, you can start the rhetoric again...

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

All other things asside, the biological reason you don't have female infantry is because a population can lose most of its males and still survive. Wipe out a large portion of the females and your civilization is doomed.

Probably true over the greater course human history (and prehistory too), which may very well be the reason that women were seldom involved in military activities (aside from being raped and enslaved if they were on the losing side). But in modern industrialized societies, many women are not required to maintain the population levels by personally reproducing. While losing 50% of the female population would hurt, with most anything below that the remaining female population could take up the slack by simply having larger families.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Oh, one other point. While males are more expendable in terms of population replacement, there are limits there too. Granted that theoretically one male could keep as many as a hundred females pregnant (nice work if you can get it ), pregnant and nursing females need a lot more economic support than can be provided—in most cases—by 1% of a whole male. Which is the reason that most societies are monogamic.

Michael

[SgtMuhammed]

Yes but that is a recent developement (in a historical timeframe). If we were monogamic from the beginning men and women would look much more alike.

Plus you also have to consider genetic diversity. Still females are a much more precious commodity in the grand biological scheme.

At least I think so.

As far as just having larger families, that hasn't really been the trend in human society recently. One would suspect that the populations of Europe would rebound with a big baby boom after the wars but the opposite has actually happened.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

All other things asside, the biological reason you don't have female infantry is because a population can lose most of its males and still survive. Wipe out a large portion of the females and your civilization is doomed.

Probably true over the greater course human history (and prehistory too), which may very well be the reason that women were seldom involved in military activities (aside from being raped and enslaved if they were on the losing side).</font>

[Peter Cairns]

You know I have a sense of DeJa Vu here, because everything I am hereing about women rings with what they said about them, going on to the land during WW1, or taking jobs in Factories in WW2, They couldn't do it, it wouldn't work...

Well surprise surprise, they did do it and it did work, and we'ed never have one either war without them.

Come to think of it worse still, I think some in the US they were saying the same thing about Black soilders in my lifetime, and I am only 44.

Hell, I have a mate who now lives in New Jersey and he says he still meets guys who don't think an african american can be an NFL Quarterback.

Peter.

[Vanir Ausf B]

But the question we're asking is could a woman be an NFL quarterback. I say YES!

[SgtMuhammed]

I'm sure a lot of defensive linemen and linebackers would agree with you.

[Andrew H.]

I'd like to "sack" her.

[mazex]

Originally posted by Colin:

Okay so what's this? We have 3 maybe 4 examples of women performing well in combat. How many women are over there?

Well Colin, something like 25% of the captains and majors of the whole israeli army are women - and in Israel women can have almost all roles, including infantry. I once met a bunch of israeli girls that had just finished their 3-year military service in Greece and for sure - they could at least drink and party better than most men I've met!

As you say that there are only 3 or 4 records of women performing well in combat I guess you know about this rather interesting one from the war between Erithrea and Ethiopia (1998-2000) - and concerns the first ever aerial kill by a SU-27, and the first by a woman:

...Only 24 hours later, a new - but highly interesting - engagement developed over the Badme area. This time, a lonesome Su-27S, reportedly flown by female pilot Capt. Aster Tolossa, was escorting several MiG-21s on a strike mission, when a single aircraft was detected, closing from the direction of Asmara. Capt. Tolossa turned to intercept and identified the target as an - apparently unarmed - Eritrean MiG-29UB. After some manoeuvring, during which there was some kind of communications exchange between the crew of the MiG and the Sukhoi, the Ethiopian was high at enemy's 6 o'clock, when she realized that the pilot of the aircraft in front of her was her former instructor. Capt. Tolossa immediately warned him that she was about to shot him down, and requested the Eritrean to land at Debre Zeit. He disobeyed, and Tolossa pulled the trigger. Exactly which weapon was used this time remains unknown, but it is highly likely that the Ethiopian used at least two air-to-air missiles, both of which were evaded, and then finished the target with 30mm gunfire. The Eritrean pilot was certainly experienced enough to evade two missiles, and he also knew who and where was the enemy. While it remains unknown if anybody ejected from that MiG-29UB, it is certain that Capt. Tolossa was given a hero's wellcome back at her base; with right, then she was the first female fighter-pilot to show down an enemy fighter-jet in the history of air warfare.

I guess the Ethiopian men flying the old Mig-21:s escorted by a lone woman in the "hot-shot" SU-27 are broader minded than some here White men from the west usually think that in Ethiopia women just raise starving children and carry water, but as often before, reality differs from prejudice...

[ November 03, 2005, 04:07 PM: Message edited by: mazex ]

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by NG cavscout:

As to their performance, it is hard to sort the truth from the "female bashing" and the politically correct double-speak.

right on the money. that about sums up my take on this subject.

the only hard fact w/r/t female capabilities I could come up with would be the admittance and P.T. criteria which are toned down for females, or are they not ?

unless I'm mistaken and this has been changed by now it means that a debate over women's actual fitness in general is moot since the army itself expects them to be at a lower fitness level.

But again, I am not up to date on this, maybe it has changed now.

Originally posted by pad152:

Where is the front line in Iraq?

The problem with the war in Iraq and the next Middle East war, there may not be a front line.

(...)

The biggest problem the army is it's focus on taking objectives and no plan for keeping them. Ok, we have taken the objective, now what do we do!

that may very well be true, but CM SF will only model the taking of the objectives, not the years of turmoil in Syria *after* the US invasion.

Originally posted by MantaRay:

Women are part of combat units now. They cannot be assigned natively to a combat unit but incase you guys havent been in the Mid East all non medical personel are REQUIRED to be in full combat readiness when either being out of camp or to security perimeter duty. Youre even supposed to take your M-16/M4, helmet, and boots when you use the latrine.

pad, mantaray et al, there is a misunderstanding here, some here are caught up in a knee-jerk p.c. reaction to knightly defend the fact that women soldiers do see combat, others simply forget the context of this question.

you are misunderstanding the original poster's and zmoney's point, the point of this thread.

it is not about female soldiers' combat capabilities.

it is not about that or how they perform in combat in iraq today. there's probably indeed a good (bad) number of females among the more than 2,000 killed (and many times more wounded) soldiers in iraq, there's no denying that they *are* in a hostile/combat environment in iraq today.

they may perform better, the same, or worse than their male counterparts - that's completely beside the point:

the point is the representation of women in CM SF:

if women are in SBCTs and tank platoons, then they should be in, if they are not, there is no reason to include them in CM SF. simple as that.

i think the occasional woman found in some attached medic or supply vehicle does not warrant the official differentiation of gender.

related topic:

but since we do have individual soldiers now I would however like to see some variation in individual soldiers capabilities/physique. whether or not that is because "he" is female is not of concern to me as a CM player.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

Yes but that is a recent developement (in a historical timeframe). If we were monogamic from the beginning men and women would look much more alike.

How on earth do you figure that?

As far as just having larger families, that hasn't really been the trend in human society recently. One would suspect that the populations of Europe would rebound with a big baby boom after the wars but the opposite has actually happened.

That's been largely for economic reasons. It doesn't pay to have lots of children in industrial societies (from the point of view if the individual families; society as a whole might be a different matter). In agrarian societies it does, because you are breeding hands to help you run the farm and to take over and support you as you age.

The second is that after the heavy casualties of the First World War, there was a shortfall of marriagable young men, which meant in Britain and France that a lot of young women became spinsters instead of wives and mothers. For some reason that I have not yet fathomed, Germany was less effected in this way. Yes, there too there were fewer marriagable young men and thus fewer families, but what families there were tended to continue to have lots of progeny.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by mazex:

I once met a bunch of israeli girls that had just finished their 3-year military service in Greece...

Wait a sec. Why Israeli girls doing their service in Greece? Is there something I haven't been told about Greco-Israeli relations? Has Greece followied Turkey's example of military cooperation with Israel? Is Israel trying to position itself to join the EU?

Michael