Quote:
Originally posted by Jon Skagfeld
In a combat situation, where mission should come before self, if a mixed gender unit comes under fire, the natural reaction of a man, should a woman become a casualty, would be to offer succour to that woman.
There goes the mission!...failure, since the objectives were not achieved, due to a basic conflict of evolved conditioning vice political pandering to screeching harridans of the PC left.
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Well, I think I agree with Skags.
We too have girlies throughout the British Army and in many tasks they prove the equal or better of the average Tommy Atkins although the selection process does weed out a large proportion of the applicants.
The problem arises with those serving as ordinary soldiers, no matter how hard they train or try, the female frame in general is designed to be less powerful than the equivalent male; rather than equality, the girlie grunts in the British Army are necessarily fitter than their male counterparts and so do more work proportionally to maintain that, but for less gain, and that's unfair.
The army has also identified that a mixed platoon under fire will tend to protect the females no matter what, as it is written into our basic human programming, and as Skags says, there goes the mission.
This last bit is worrying; I have no problem with the equality bit and if females want to serve in the front lines with a fair chance of getting shot or bits of them blown off, that's fine; the very effect of their known presence, through no fault of their own and the nature of human programming is the problem.
Its interesting that, AFAIK, the US has found that diminutive females can make very good single-seat fighter pilots, especially that the smaller frame can withstand G forces more easily than larger and so heavier males, however, the RAF steadfastly refuses to even contemplate girlies in this role but has some excellent helicopter and transport pilots.
Whenever has life been fair? I guess I have looked at a lot of people and fundamentally blokes and girlies have always been different (thank Heavens) and not equal, not even constructed equally; both sides need to recognise that.
Seems to me that a 1/2" combination spanner does a specific job whilst a 9/16" open-ender does something different and both have their place albeit both are just "spanners". (You continental N. Americans can insert "wrench" where appropriate.)
Now, you could just have an adjustable spanner, but when there's a tough nut to crack the end result is usually just rounded corners, the object hasn't been achieved and the problem is now worse.
R.