Opening up combat roles for women who can pass the physical requirements seems like an appropriate step. But my understanding is that combat soldiers tend to carry a lot of heavy gear with them, some MOS's even more than others. It will be interesting to see the percentage of women who qualify for infantry grunt work or for feeding a gun tube all day. It will also be interesting to see what if any adjustments the military needs to make to accommodate for separate-sex privacy in the front lines, as well as the amount of any possible litigation concerning sexual discrimination and harassment arising from the fact that a unit in a line of foxholes usually isn't a very neat, tidy and sensitive place.
xTreme feminism!
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If you insist on having separate showers or bathrooms for men and women when you're in the middle of Afghanistan, get the heck out. I'm all in favour of letting anyone who's physically capable of a job, do the job (for equal wage and with equal rights etc). If you need special accomodations, you're not equal for the task.
Of course, while I've met women who demanded female soldiers are supplied with all kinds of nonsense (for the record, "putting a garbage can in the toilet" isn't ridiculous nonsense; "putting up a separate-and-equally-large shower facilities for 2 women as for 48 men" is), I've never actually met a female combat soldier who asked for that. There's a difference between "showering together" and "sharing shower facilities". If you can't do that because "eww man cooties", you don't belong in a war zone. If you can't because the rest of your unit will rape/abuse you, the rest of your unit doesn't belong there.
But showing bigotry against majorities is ok, because there's far worse bigotry against minorities!
it's not okay, it's just not a big problem
(referring to the fact that this statement can be used in response to 90% of your comments, so it's funny that you use it yourself)
I imagine these things might be easily arranged in a barracks environment. Just have your combat MOS women use the same facilities as the non-combat MOS women. No insurmountable obstacles that I can see.
But I am thinking more about ground forces under field conditions, where such things as showers and toilets are a luxury, and space and weight in the carrying capacity of a light infantry unit at a premium. 'Man cooties' don't feature in such things.
Articles I've read suggest that they are looking at shared facilities.
Either way, the rape problem is probably only going to get worse on the front lines.
On the other hand, this might actually be helpful, because currently on the front lines women are second class soldiers - not eligible for the same promotions, awards, etc, which suggests that their jobs weren't protected as strongly as the men's, therefore any complaints about rape would probably lead to them losing their job, regardless of success of prosecution against the criminal or not.
With recognized equal footing and the same rights as men on the front line, they might actually have a chance at keeping their job even if they make complaints against others in their units.
GasBandit
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In that they're both dumb, definitely. If you disagree, post why you disagree. If it really needs a lock (and I don't mean "I don't wanna listen to this any more la la la lock it") then report it. If you just don't want to listen to a certain person any more, ignore them. If you think a thread has gone beyond it's usefulness, unsubscribe from it.
The "disagree" is for when you simply disagree, but you aren't interested in explaining why. It's better than a post saying only, "I disagree" or "Shut up".
The Lock is actually a social cue, and a replacement for "I don't think this is bad enough to actually flag, but you're getting awfully close to the line and might want to reconsider being such a jerk."
Although I typically only use them for their humor value.
GasBandit
Staff member
I disagree. It's a cowardly and dismissive way to end a conversation in a medium that is supposed to be about conversation.
(See what I did there?)
We don't need a macro for that, we need creative expression through communication. It's asinine. (There's that word again) And frankly, a pissy, passive agressive "social cue" like that will only egg those it's meant to be used on (like me) on.
Like back when "dislike" was a thing and Chaz and I were both seeing how many we could get.
I wonder how much time of his life gilgamesh has wasted rating every single one of my posts "funny"
Not everyone, just the ones you're funny in.
Most of the times I don't tag a post you make as funny, is when you're trying to be.
I just went with the flow itt, there were like 7 posts about the lock feature before I said anything
Necronic
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Dunno why people are mocking that statement. Bigotry against the majority is not a problem in our country. Philosophically it's a problem. Practically it is not.
Black man: "Fuck the police!"
*is put in jail*
White man: REVEEEEEEEEEEEERSE RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISSSSSSSSSSSSSSM
I would use this smiley possibly to the exclusion of all others.
figmentPez
Staff member
I disagree, while prejudice against the majority very seldom hurts the majority on anything more than a personal/emotional level, it does harm the minority by hindering communication about prejudice. A man hearing "well, you're just a man so it's impossible for you to understand feminism" may not harm his progress in his profession or his status in society at large, it sure as hell makes it harder for feminism to make progress. The same goes for race, religion, socio-economic class and more. As long as those in the majority (or those in power, not always the same thing) are treated often enough as the enemy, it will serve to make it more difficult to gain sympathy and understanding for the minority/disadvantaged.
ahh my favorite argument - feminists are the reason women are still treated unfairly
figmentPez
Staff member
See, even Charlie gets confused and thinks that feminism = misandry.
If you were paying attention, my argument was that hatred breeds hatred. Both misogyny and misandry are stumbling blocks to feminism because either type of hatred only encourages more distrust between the sexes. Racism harms civil rights, period, because hated based on race (regardless of what race is being hated) only encourages distrust between the races. It is only a small minority of voices that promote misandry within feminism, and only a small minority of voices within civil rights that promote racism, but vocal minorities can still have an impact.
Noone listens to me. What can I say.
Pez, both this post and the long-ish one before it is the most concise and accurate way I've ever seen that sentiment expressed. Actually I struggle to think of any other time I've seen the actual correlation stated. Thanks.
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