Jezebel 
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New York, 12:35 AM
Tue Nov 24
65 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/13/09
(Kidding, obviously. I am bummed about these results.)
10/13/09
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10/02/09
Not according to my friends in the foreign service. Apparently as a kidnap victim a male government worker is about as likely to get raped as a female one.
However, the women are still more vulnerable to rape when it comes to their fellow soldiers. I guess they're just more selective than terrorist cells and thugs?
10/02/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
They also never mention this teensy little fact: the Army PT test changes as you get older. If recognizing that women are different from men is so bad they better get rid of the age categories and require everybody to pass the eighteen-year-old male standard, then.
Soldiers get tortured to make other soldiers break. The idea that male soldiers are particularly susceptible to seeing this happen to females is bullshit, considering the amount of shit some males dish out. AS a matter of fact, the guy who dish out that kind of crap tend to buy this kind of crap.
10/01/09
There are a few, horrible cases where it's covered up. The vast majority of cases get handled appropriately.
As for the PT test, I can speak from experience that older men are encouraged to not go into combat arms specialties. When younger men rise in ranks and grow older in these MOS's, they are moved to more administrative roles. An infantry 1SG has a much different role than an infantry PV2. For males, the PT test in fact gets harder in the physical strength categories until you're about 30 or so, BTW, with increases in the required amounts of push ups and sit ups.
Also, with combat arms units, they hold their soldiers to an even higher PT standard than most of the Army. Combat arms units often won't promote soldiers unless they have a 90-90-90, as opposed to the Army standard of 60-60-60 (scores are in percentiles for push ups, sit ups, and running). While I'd argue that plenty of women can meet a male 60-60-60, very, very few women can meet a 90-90-90.
I'm against women serving in combat arms units, if only because I think it would be a bad idea to put one or two women on a 20-50 person outpost in the middle of Afghanistan, miles away from the nearest base, with very little ready help if something went wrong and they were sexually assaulted.
10/01/09
10/02/09
My main point is that the Army is a lot more pro-active towards sexual assault prevention than Jezebel gives credit for.
As for the infantry... what I'm saying is that the risks are substantially different. In our current situation, women are mostly on larger bases, and have access to quick medical help, emergency contraception if it's needed, and police like authorities. On many combat out posts you're dealing with a small male population in the beginning stages of PTSD, few medical resources beyond combat life support, and no prison facilities to speak of.
It's been well documented that many of these men undergo a violent period upon coming back to the states, and there's been a marked increase in sexual violence among this population upon redeployment. You think we wouldn't see the same statistics while they're in the middle of combat?
10/01/09
I highly doubt the attitude of men being tortured is "suck it up and welcome to captivity." No one would bother torturing in the first place if that was such a widespread and effective attitude....John McCain, for example, "confessed" to all sorts of things when he was a POW.
10/01/09
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10/01/09
In fact I would argue that the single most important factor in what makes a good soldier (man or woman) is the ability handle extreme fatigue.
As to the charge that men will reveal secrets when seeing women tortured, I would counter that all POWs give out what they know. They are being tortured daily, no man or woman, can withstand that kind of psychological and physical strain. The thing is, no individual really knows that much.
10/01/09
God yes. I always chuckle when the argument of women being weaker than men is used to defend the fact that women still cannot serve in the infantry. Do people think that the guys in the infantry go around picking up huge boulders and chucking them at the enemy? Some jobs might require *some* physical strength, like a mortarman, but still there are women out there who can hump that. Like you said it's the ability to withstand fatigue also, that's why they train the infantry the way that they do. That's how they weed out the people that can't hack it. If a woman can hack it, what is the problem?
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
I'd like to add also that the amount of lean, yet strong men in the infantry would most certainly outnumber the bulky, power clean-types. People seem to think that the infantry is a bunch of hulking muscle masses overpowering the enemy. Not true. I've seen more bulky types in MOS's outside of infantry, because they have the time to train their bodies that the infantrymen do not. Their bodies are tuned to the work they do daily. Hike. Shoot. Go out in the field. Low calories, high cardio.
I know the number of women wanting to go infantry would be low. They deserve the chance as much as any other person, though.
10/01/09
10/01/09
They're not exactly meeting on a field at dawn. Does it matter if you let women on the front lines when there aren't front lines?
It seems kind of odd to me. Am I missing something?
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
Is he just doing an impression of Viggo Mortensen's character in GI Jane?