Women in the Services front line

[SpontaneousOrder]

Depends on how it's done. The significant majority of British Army units are rubbish. But if you said that women had the right to join ANY unit in the armed forces, then I think it's be a disaster.

For example, I know that 99.99 - probably even fewer - women could complete basic comando training to be a Royal Marine. It would probably be roughly similar for the Parachute Regiment.

If you allow women to apply, then the implications are enormous given that so few will succeed. It would cost many millions to accommodate this change for 2 or 3 women in a corps of 5 thousand. Other issues would have to be addressed too - I once had to share a sleeping bag, naked, with another man. It would be good if this *could* be a non-issue, but given the way things currently are I doubt it's work any time soon.

There would have to be an amnesty on political correctness too. The corps, and to a large extent the paras too, are superficially racist, sexist, ageist, and any other possible '-ist' you can think of. It's all in good fun, but spotty people are accused of being a victim of blister-agent attack, asians are made to belly-dance, people with big heads are renamed something like 'cow head', black people are nicknamed things like 'nutty' (bootneck lingo for chocolate), prostitutes are used, general sluttery is encouraged, boring lectures are interspersed with video clips of girls in bikinis shooting automatic weapons, accidental drownings & shootings are joked about, the 'c' word is used like any other, people walk around naked all the time, people frequently decide to get naked at the bar in town, middle-easterners are called all sorts of names relating to dish-cloths & camels, foreign children are given solid fuel blocks to eat instead of kendal mint-cake, colleagues urinate on you in the shower while you're shampooing your hair, guys touch their toes while colleagues check their arseholes for ticks.
I once saw some initiation tom-foolery where the naked, drunk, new guy had to catch a poo done buy another bootneck hanging his arse out of the window 5 floors up in an accommodation block. Which was odd.

Recruits are punished by being made to crawl through fields of gorse in their pants.
Trained ranks get banged out.

Porn lives on the walls. Shemale porn lives in your locker. Everyone cracks up laughing at the bit in kickboxer where jcvd collapses on the floor after kicking the tree down.

Watching last of the mohicans over and over again is mandatory. Rocky 3 is the best, by law.

etc, etc.

All of this *could* change. But you have to remember why these people are being employed in the first place.

[MyUserName]

Im posing the question from whether its right for women to be taught to kill and likely be killed on the front line.

This was such an open and shut question that it did not even cross my mind that it needed an actual answer.

It is not more right or wrong to teach women this than it is to teach men.

When I posted I was thinking of it from the Army's point of view, as in what the actual issue is.

[Antman]

I don't think that it's a question of equality, it's about fighting capability.

Physically are they at the same level as men? Could they drag/carry a wounded comrade to safety? Physical fighting against a man? If they could be compromised easily because of relative physicality could this endanger a platoon, a position?

I don't doubt that mentally they could pull the trigger. However as someone mentioned earlier there different categories (male/female) of sports for a reason.

[DodgyAgent]

I don't think it is the enemy they have to be worried about.

As squaddies have proven time and time again they cant deal with women in their midst, the first woman gets incapacitated on the field of war all the squaddies will be dropping their rifles and jumping on her.

[DodgyAgent]

Next thing they'll be learning to write computer programs and doing DIY.

[mudskipper]

Next thing they'll be learning to write computer programs and doing DIY.

Oh, you are hilalrious.

[vwdan]

I think the truth is that modern insurgency style combat in places like Afghan and Iraq has shown us that there is no real definition of front line (Even the biggest bases are attacked and mortared on a regular basis) and anybody who steps outside the wire has to be trained and prepared to kill and be combat effective. Even logistics movements come under regular attack. Not only that, but the women who find themselves in these situations have proven time and again that they can indeed fight back and soldier properly under effective fire.

Other than that we merely have somewhat arbitrary definitions of what it is to "look for a fight" and, personally, I'm not sure if that's for any reason other than the belief that women somehow can't stomach killing a person. It's not like there aren't plenty of big and hard (meant genuinely) male soldiers coming back with PTSD etc - you're either mentally equipped or not, but nobody ever knows until after.

Spontaneous makes a reasonable point about the numbers, but I don't think that's an excuse to continue being sexist. As I'm sure SO will enjoy admitting that the vast majority of blokes couldn't hack it through the Commando Course or P-Company, so the fact that most women won't be able to is neither here nor there really. Other than that, every other unit in the military appears have integrated successfully.

Out of idle curiosity, I checked the results for the last Paras 10 Tab and the first woman was 182nd place, though still a good few mins quicker than me. She didn't quite make the cutoff for regular P-Coy, but then neither did most of the blokes who did it either - including me.

[SpontaneousOrder]

As I'm sure SO will enjoy admitting that the vast majority of blokes couldn't hack it through the Commando Course or P-Company, so the fact that most women won't be able to is neither here nor there really.

It is very relevant. The vast majority of men wouldn't qualify, but even fewer women could - by a factor of a thousand or so. When I was in there was a manpower shortage - and that's in a corps of only 5 thousand. Not because there weren't enough candidates at the careers office, but because there weren't enough when you consider that 1 in 300 or so will make it through. The old slogan used to say 99% need not apply, but if you apply that to the general male population then its much less than that.
They would likely have 1 or 2 (if that) women in the entire corps (excluding the bandies).

Out of idle curiosity, I checked the results for the last Paras 10 Tab and the first woman was 182nd place, though still a good few mins quicker than me. She didn't quite make the cutoff for regular P-Coy, but then neither did most of the blokes who did it either - including me.

P-Coy is not the paras though, just like the All Arms Command Course is not the Royal Marines. A 10 week All Arms course is to Command Training as the 10-tab fun-run is to P-Coy.

Capt. Pip Tattersall was the first woman to ever become a Commando, while I was in the Corps, on her third attempt. The All Arms course was only 9 weeks, and Royal Marines generally only get a couple of attempts at the real thing.

She did good though. I used to like seeing her in the gallery at breakfast (female faces were rare unless you'd done something nasty to yourself), and thought she was home & dry until she got kicked off the course when they discovered that she had done the entire final exercise without firing her weapon (in order to keep it clean). She made it a couple of attempts later in the following year.

The point is, though, that she is a lone woman who took multiple attempts to pass a course would be fairly trivial for one of the young Marine recruits (and to be fair - the All Arms guys tend to be a bit older, so it'll be harder in that sense). All arms guys (including men) don't fight alongside marines. They provide supporting services etc (not that that can't get hairy) as the Corps doesn't have its own artillery etc.

Spontaneous makes a reasonable point about the numbers, but I don't think that's an excuse to continue being sexist.

I'm not picking a side - It would suck to be a capable woman but not allowed to join.

BUT... it's in no way sexist. Unless you redefine the meaning of the word 'sexist'.

It's just a recognition of the economic realities of the situation.

[Paddy]

Women will make excellent fighters once a month providing they synchronize.

[mudskipper]

Women will make excellent fighters once a month providing they synchronize.

More side-splitting humour. PMSL.