From: Tom Cowper (tcowper@capital.net)
Date: Thu Jan 17 2002 - 06:25:45 MST
On 16 Jan 2002, at 22:42, Sean Kenny wrote:
> > There are a few militaries in the world that have units that work exactly
> > like that. In practice, this seems to work out MUCH better than the
> > segregated forms, and both the men and women got used to a perfectly
> > gender and orientation neutral military relatively quickly. <snip>
> The Israeli Military perhaps?
It's a common misconception that the Israeli Army is gender neutral or
fully integrated. During the early years of nationhood it was true that
women fought alongside men, mostly due to a shortage of manpower and the
unorthodox revolutionary nature of the conflict at the time. Once Israel
established itself their more formalized armed forces removed women from
all frontline combat roles, similar to what we have in America today.
I am curious as to any other armies of the world that are fully integrated
along the lines of Starship Troopers. As a former military officer I'm
not aware of any. It "seems to work out MUCH better..."? If there are
any and they do work MUCH better, I'd love to know about it. I'd also
like to know their demonstrated combat effectiveness or reputation for
success on the battlefield. Because the fundamental issue here is not
whether women can fight. They certainly can and do. The issue is how
well a fully integrated infantry or combat-arms unit would fight, as a
unit, over a period of time. Sexual tension injected into an otherwise
highly emotional situation under dire and strenuous circumstances that put
young men and young women together in very close and sometimes intimate
relationships would seem to me to have a significant impact on combat
effectiveness. No? As far as I'm aware it's the main reason that it hasn't
been adopted in the US, political rhetoric aside. It's more than cultural
indoctrination, and it's not something that will simply go away as society
or people get used to it. Combat effectiveness is hard enough to attain
and maintain without the turmoil of the sexual factor on the frontlines.
And it will be a long time before we condition men and women to simply
ignore or suppress at will our evolutionary sexual impulses enough to
where they don't negatively impact unit fighting capability, transhumanism
notwithstanding. IMO.
Tom Cowper
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