Women in combat ?!?!?! a very bad idea
For general background, see http://www.cmrlink.org/content/women-in-combat
Wikipedia: Concussions_in_sport#Female_sports
By JOHN BRANCH
New York Times, 2014-02-19
...
But unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk,
including Alpine skiing, luge and ski jumping,
there are few concessions made for women.
...
[How on earth can those people trying to put women in combat
ignore factors such as raised in this article?
Will our enemies make "concessions" to female troops?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Not to mention the colossal distraction that will be caused by their presence,
and the problems that consensual sexual relations will pose
to good military order and discipline.
Who on earth wants to have the responsibility
of trying to keep mixed sex troops
from having sex together?
Talk about doomed to fail!
Here are some further articles either on
higher injury rates to women or the military leadership's reaction thereto
(emphasis is added):]
by Caitlin Dewey
Washington Post, 2013-11-02
...
[A] growing body of research suggests that -
counter to the popular imagery
of young men smashing into each other in football and hockey -
female athletes suffer relatively more concussions than their male counterparts,
and they struggle with more dramatic symptoms when they do.
In high school sports that have similar rules for boys and girls,
girls get concussions at twice the rate,
according to a 2011 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Another study found that among all collegiate athletes,
female soccer players had the highest overall concussion rates.
...
Despite the recent surge in concussion awareness, researchers and doctors still know very little about the exact mechanics of concussion. They understand the initial trauma, when the brain bumps up against the skull and begins to bleed or bruise. Less clear are what Shane Caswell, executive director of George Mason University’s sports medicine lab, calls the “effects downstream” - such things as impaired cognition, memory loss, imbalance, mood disorder and changes to brain physiology.
Researchers also don’t entirely understand why women seem to suffer more concussions than men. The most common theory: Women have smaller and weaker necks, which makes their heads more prone to the violent snapping that results in serious concussions. Estrogen levels and cerebral bloodflow, which differ by sex, may also play a role.
Concussions also tend to amplify certain preexisting conditions, and women experience far higher migraine, anxiety and depression rates than men. But there’s also a serious risk of reporting bias: Perhaps women only appear to get more headaches because women are more comfortable speaking up when they’re hurt. An extensive study released last week by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council warns that young athletes in particular face a “culture of resistance” when it comes to reporting and treating concussions.
Whatever the reasons, the numbers are dramatic. In Caswell’s study of high school athletes at Fairfax County Public Schools, girls were almost twice as likely to suffer a concussion as boys in sports whose rules and equipment were similar for both sexes. A study of high school and college athletes in 2007 found that soccer carried the highest concussion risk of any women's sport. Perhaps most surprisingly, it found that women playing soccer in college suffered concussions at a higher overall rate than athletes in any other sport, including football. Researchers point out that these figures take both games and practices into account, which could skew the concussion rates in sports like soccer, where athletes often practice in game-like conditions.
Sports concussions: Girls more vulnerable than boys
Girls are almost twice as likely as boys to get concussions
when playing sports with similar rules and safety equipment.
That may result from girls’ necks being less robust than those of boys,
which might make girls’ heads more vulnerable —
or it could be that girls are more likely than boys to report injuries.
...
by Preston Williams
Washington Post, 2013-01-23
...
Young female athletes are two to eight times more likely than young males
to tear their anterior cruciate ligaments,
according to the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.
[Washington area] girls’ basketball players are doing their part
to validate a statistic
that one local orthopaedic surgeon considers “a national epidemic.”
...
[It seems shameful to me that
the people and articles that have been urging that the military put women in combat units
do so despite these reports about
the higher vulnerability [relative to men] of women to physical injury.
How will the military handle this?
There seem to be at least two negative effects:
1. Lower effectiveness of women in some combat situations.
2. Based on past experience, feminists will demand a double standard,
giving women lower standards to meet.
But that is, it seems to me, unfair to men as a group.]
Center for Military Readiness, 2013-11-14
...
Acquiescent military service chiefs keep insisting that
training requirements will be "the same,"
implying standards will be as high as before.
However, as the Center for Military Readiness reports in this CMR Policy Analysis,
the fine print "catch" is hidden in plain sight:
Double-Think About Double Standards
"Gender-Neutral" Training To Include Gender-Normed Scores
Footnotes in a June Marine Corps report to Congress admitted that
"gender-neutral" standards will include fitness tests that use
"gender-normed" scores.
For example,
to pass the Marines' new Physical Fitness Test (PFT) going into effect in January,
women will have to do three pull-ups − just above the failing grade for men.
Eight pull-ups will earn 100 points for women, but only 40 points for men.
To get the same 100-point grade, men will have to do 20pull-ups.
(Due to concerns about "potential risks,"
the Marines recently postponed women's pull-up requirements into 2014.)
Another contradictory footnote described three events in the Marines' Combat Fitness Test (CFT) as "gender-neutral,"
even though the test is
"gender-normed, similar to the PFT,
in order to account for physiological differences between the genders."
...
The Army plans to order (not "allow") women into
previously all-male field artillery and armor units by July 2014, and infantry positions by July 2015.
When unsuitable assignments result in debilitating injuries,
necessary reassignments of women will divert thousands of dollars
from shrinking Army funds.
Practices that nullify promises of "gender-equality" in the infantry
are beginning to echo President Obama on health care:
"If you like tough training in your infantry, you can keep it. Period."
Today's promises won't matter
when the president appoints new military leaders
who will quietly change officer and enlisted infantry training programs
to promote "gender diversity metrics,"
another name for quotas.
...
In 2002 and again in 2010, the United Kingdom
decided not to assign women to the infantry for various reasons,
including a failed experiment with "gender-free" training
that was ended after 18 months due to excessive female injuries.
In January Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey admitted that high standards beyond the abilities of women will be questioned.
Training programs deemed "invalid"
will be eliminated, modified, or scored differently
to achieve what Gen. Dempsey called a "critical mass" of women in the combat arms.
As in the past,
Pentagon feminists will never accept high standards
they consider to be "barriers" to women's careers.
Enlisted women, who outnumber female officers five to one,
will pay the price for career opportunities for a few female officers,
even though, for decades, women have been promoted at rates
equal to or faster than men.
...
It is artificial to constrain the debate about women in the infantry
to physical capabilities.
This doesn't address what holds an infantry unit together
in the worst conditions humanity has to offer.
by Gregory Newbold (Lt. Gen., USMC, ret.)
War on the Rocks, 2015-09-09
...
An infantryman’s lot is to endure what we think is unendurable,
to participate in the inhumane, and to thrive in misery.
Normal humans do not deliberately expose themselves
to confront a machine gun that is firing at them over 10 rounds a second.
“Smart” humans do not run toward the sound of gunfire.
Logic does not tell you to lay down your life
in the hope that you can recover an already dead comrade.
And normal organizations do not strive, as their first priority, to evoke fear.
For you see,
the characteristics that produce uncommon valor as a common virtue
are not physical at all,
but are derived from the mysterious chemistry that forms in an infantry unit
that revels in the most crude and profane existence
so that they may be more effective killers than their foe.
Members of such units deliberately reduce the individual and collective level of humanity
and avoid all distractions
so that its actions are fundamental, instinctive, and coldly efficient.
Polite company, private hygiene, and weakness all step aside.
These are the men who can confront
the Islamic State, North Korean automatons, or Putin’s Spetsnaz
and win every time.
Believe me, you will need them, and we don’t get to choose when that will be.
In this direct ground combat environment,
you do not fight for an ideal, a just cause, America, or Mom and apple pie.
You endure the inhumanity and sacrifices of direct ground combat because,
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
This selflessness is derived from bonding,
and bonding from shared events
and the unquestioning subordination of self for the good of the team.
But what destroys this alchemy — and, therefore, combat effectiveness — are
pettiness, rumor-mongering, suspicion, and jealousy.
...
Nineteen-year-old males everywhere are from Mars.
They, and their early twenty-something brethren,
are overloaded with testosterone,
supremely confident about their invincibility,
and prone to illogical antics.
This sometimes produces intemperate behavior in everyday America,
but the same traits are, by the way, nearly ideal for direct ground combat.
The same youthful ingredients produce unacceptable behavior
in the pristine and low pressure environments
of boarding schools, academic institutions, and cubicle farms.
Truth be told, in later stages of life these traits also lead
to humiliating interactions on Capitol Hill or in the White House.
Why, then, do we suppose that sexual dynamics — or mere perceptions thereof —
among the most libido laden age cohort in humans, in the basest of environs,
will not degrade the nearly spiritual glue
that enables the infantry to achieve the illogical and endure the unendurable?
Two women just graduated from the Army’s very, very difficult Ranger School.
The surprise of that is that it surprised anyone.
There unquestionably are women who can pass any physical challenge the military may require.
We should celebrate those who succeed and encourage others.
They are worthy role models, and certainly not just to women.
But the issue we’re now debating has to include
a recognition of cohesion and the cost of sexual dynamics
in a bare-knuckled brawl, amidst primeval mayhem,
in which we expect the collective entity to persevere
because it has a greater will and fighting spirit,
and not because it is bigger, faster, or more agile.
The championship team in virtually any professional sport
may only coincidentally be the most physically talented,
but it most assuredly will be the most cohesive.
Why not appreciate the same ingredients in infantry units?
Finally, you may bet your future earnings that
the current effort to integrate the infantry will not cease
with a few extraordinary females,
but will eventually accommodate a social engineering goal by changing standards.
Think I am wrong? It’s already happening.
Read the words and understand the goals of
the current Secretary of the Navy (an arsonist in the fire department)
and the Secretary of the Air Force,
and examine what we now call “the Dempsey Rule.”
...
Wikipedia: Concussions_in_sport#Female_sports
2014-02-19-NYT-extreme-park-crashes-taking-outsize-toll-on-women
Extreme Park Crashes Taking Outsize Toll on WomenBy JOHN BRANCH
New York Times, 2014-02-19
...
But unlike some of the time-honored sports of risk,
including Alpine skiing, luge and ski jumping,
there are few concessions made for women.
...
[How on earth can those people trying to put women in combat
ignore factors such as raised in this article?
Will our enemies make "concessions" to female troops?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Not to mention the colossal distraction that will be caused by their presence,
and the problems that consensual sexual relations will pose
to good military order and discipline.
Who on earth wants to have the responsibility
of trying to keep mixed sex troops
from having sex together?
Talk about doomed to fail!
Here are some further articles either on
higher injury rates to women or the military leadership's reaction thereto
(emphasis is added):]
2013-11-02-WP-concussions
Her biggest saveby Caitlin Dewey
Washington Post, 2013-11-02
...
[A] growing body of research suggests that -
counter to the popular imagery
of young men smashing into each other in football and hockey -
female athletes suffer relatively more concussions than their male counterparts,
and they struggle with more dramatic symptoms when they do.
In high school sports that have similar rules for boys and girls,
girls get concussions at twice the rate,
according to a 2011 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Another study found that among all collegiate athletes,
female soccer players had the highest overall concussion rates.
...
Despite the recent surge in concussion awareness, researchers and doctors still know very little about the exact mechanics of concussion. They understand the initial trauma, when the brain bumps up against the skull and begins to bleed or bruise. Less clear are what Shane Caswell, executive director of George Mason University’s sports medicine lab, calls the “effects downstream” - such things as impaired cognition, memory loss, imbalance, mood disorder and changes to brain physiology.
Researchers also don’t entirely understand why women seem to suffer more concussions than men. The most common theory: Women have smaller and weaker necks, which makes their heads more prone to the violent snapping that results in serious concussions. Estrogen levels and cerebral bloodflow, which differ by sex, may also play a role.
Concussions also tend to amplify certain preexisting conditions, and women experience far higher migraine, anxiety and depression rates than men. But there’s also a serious risk of reporting bias: Perhaps women only appear to get more headaches because women are more comfortable speaking up when they’re hurt. An extensive study released last week by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council warns that young athletes in particular face a “culture of resistance” when it comes to reporting and treating concussions.
Whatever the reasons, the numbers are dramatic. In Caswell’s study of high school athletes at Fairfax County Public Schools, girls were almost twice as likely to suffer a concussion as boys in sports whose rules and equipment were similar for both sexes. A study of high school and college athletes in 2007 found that soccer carried the highest concussion risk of any women's sport. Perhaps most surprisingly, it found that women playing soccer in college suffered concussions at a higher overall rate than athletes in any other sport, including football. Researchers point out that these figures take both games and practices into account, which could skew the concussion rates in sports like soccer, where athletes often practice in game-like conditions.
Sports concussions: Girls more vulnerable than boys
Girls are almost twice as likely as boys to get concussions
when playing sports with similar rules and safety equipment.
That may result from girls’ necks being less robust than those of boys,
which might make girls’ heads more vulnerable —
or it could be that girls are more likely than boys to report injuries.
...
2013-01-23-WP-ACL-injuries
Rash of girls’ basketball ACL injuries underscores need for preventive measuresby Preston Williams
Washington Post, 2013-01-23
...
Young female athletes are two to eight times more likely than young males
to tear their anterior cruciate ligaments,
according to the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.
[Washington area] girls’ basketball players are doing their part
to validate a statistic
that one local orthopaedic surgeon considers “a national epidemic.”
...
[It seems shameful to me that
the people and articles that have been urging that the military put women in combat units
do so despite these reports about
the higher vulnerability [relative to men] of women to physical injury.
How will the military handle this?
There seem to be at least two negative effects:
1. Lower effectiveness of women in some combat situations.
2. Based on past experience, feminists will demand a double standard,
giving women lower standards to meet.
But that is, it seems to me, unfair to men as a group.]
2013-11-14-CMR-Double-Standards
Double-Think and Dissembling About Double Standards in CombatCenter for Military Readiness, 2013-11-14
...
Acquiescent military service chiefs keep insisting that
training requirements will be "the same,"
implying standards will be as high as before.
However, as the Center for Military Readiness reports in this CMR Policy Analysis,
the fine print "catch" is hidden in plain sight:
Double-Think About Double Standards
"Gender-Neutral" Training To Include Gender-Normed Scores
Footnotes in a June Marine Corps report to Congress admitted that
"gender-neutral" standards will include fitness tests that use
"gender-normed" scores.
For example,
to pass the Marines' new Physical Fitness Test (PFT) going into effect in January,
women will have to do three pull-ups − just above the failing grade for men.
Eight pull-ups will earn 100 points for women, but only 40 points for men.
To get the same 100-point grade, men will have to do 20pull-ups.
(Due to concerns about "potential risks,"
the Marines recently postponed women's pull-up requirements into 2014.)
Another contradictory footnote described three events in the Marines' Combat Fitness Test (CFT) as "gender-neutral,"
even though the test is
"gender-normed, similar to the PFT,
in order to account for physiological differences between the genders."
...
The Army plans to order (not "allow") women into
previously all-male field artillery and armor units by July 2014, and infantry positions by July 2015.
When unsuitable assignments result in debilitating injuries,
necessary reassignments of women will divert thousands of dollars
from shrinking Army funds.
Practices that nullify promises of "gender-equality" in the infantry
are beginning to echo President Obama on health care:
"If you like tough training in your infantry, you can keep it. Period."
Today's promises won't matter
when the president appoints new military leaders
who will quietly change officer and enlisted infantry training programs
to promote "gender diversity metrics,"
another name for quotas.
...
In 2002 and again in 2010, the United Kingdom
decided not to assign women to the infantry for various reasons,
including a failed experiment with "gender-free" training
that was ended after 18 months due to excessive female injuries.
In January Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey admitted that high standards beyond the abilities of women will be questioned.
Training programs deemed "invalid"
will be eliminated, modified, or scored differently
to achieve what Gen. Dempsey called a "critical mass" of women in the combat arms.
As in the past,
Pentagon feminists will never accept high standards
they consider to be "barriers" to women's careers.
Enlisted women, who outnumber female officers five to one,
will pay the price for career opportunities for a few female officers,
even though, for decades, women have been promoted at rates
equal to or faster than men.
...
2015
2015-09-09-Newbold-what-tempers-the-steel-of-an-infantry-unit
What Tempers the Steel of an Infantry UnitIt is artificial to constrain the debate about women in the infantry
to physical capabilities.
This doesn't address what holds an infantry unit together
in the worst conditions humanity has to offer.
by Gregory Newbold (Lt. Gen., USMC, ret.)
War on the Rocks, 2015-09-09
...
An infantryman’s lot is to endure what we think is unendurable,
to participate in the inhumane, and to thrive in misery.
Normal humans do not deliberately expose themselves
to confront a machine gun that is firing at them over 10 rounds a second.
“Smart” humans do not run toward the sound of gunfire.
Logic does not tell you to lay down your life
in the hope that you can recover an already dead comrade.
And normal organizations do not strive, as their first priority, to evoke fear.
For you see,
the characteristics that produce uncommon valor as a common virtue
are not physical at all,
but are derived from the mysterious chemistry that forms in an infantry unit
that revels in the most crude and profane existence
so that they may be more effective killers than their foe.
Members of such units deliberately reduce the individual and collective level of humanity
and avoid all distractions
so that its actions are fundamental, instinctive, and coldly efficient.
Polite company, private hygiene, and weakness all step aside.
These are the men who can confront
the Islamic State, North Korean automatons, or Putin’s Spetsnaz
and win every time.
Believe me, you will need them, and we don’t get to choose when that will be.
In this direct ground combat environment,
you do not fight for an ideal, a just cause, America, or Mom and apple pie.
You endure the inhumanity and sacrifices of direct ground combat because,
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
This selflessness is derived from bonding,
and bonding from shared events
and the unquestioning subordination of self for the good of the team.
But what destroys this alchemy — and, therefore, combat effectiveness — are
pettiness, rumor-mongering, suspicion, and jealousy.
...
Nineteen-year-old males everywhere are from Mars.
They, and their early twenty-something brethren,
are overloaded with testosterone,
supremely confident about their invincibility,
and prone to illogical antics.
This sometimes produces intemperate behavior in everyday America,
but the same traits are, by the way, nearly ideal for direct ground combat.
The same youthful ingredients produce unacceptable behavior
in the pristine and low pressure environments
of boarding schools, academic institutions, and cubicle farms.
Truth be told, in later stages of life these traits also lead
to humiliating interactions on Capitol Hill or in the White House.
Why, then, do we suppose that sexual dynamics — or mere perceptions thereof —
among the most libido laden age cohort in humans, in the basest of environs,
will not degrade the nearly spiritual glue
that enables the infantry to achieve the illogical and endure the unendurable?
Two women just graduated from the Army’s very, very difficult Ranger School.
The surprise of that is that it surprised anyone.
There unquestionably are women who can pass any physical challenge the military may require.
We should celebrate those who succeed and encourage others.
They are worthy role models, and certainly not just to women.
But the issue we’re now debating has to include
a recognition of cohesion and the cost of sexual dynamics
in a bare-knuckled brawl, amidst primeval mayhem,
in which we expect the collective entity to persevere
because it has a greater will and fighting spirit,
and not because it is bigger, faster, or more agile.
The championship team in virtually any professional sport
may only coincidentally be the most physically talented,
but it most assuredly will be the most cohesive.
Why not appreciate the same ingredients in infantry units?
Finally, you may bet your future earnings that
the current effort to integrate the infantry will not cease
with a few extraordinary females,
but will eventually accommodate a social engineering goal by changing standards.
Think I am wrong? It’s already happening.
Read the words and understand the goals of
the current Secretary of the Navy (an arsonist in the fire department)
and the Secretary of the Air Force,
and examine what we now call “the Dempsey Rule.”
...
posted by KHarbaugh at 03:49
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