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M'kay, I was wrong. Knew it could very well be.


Honestly, I think horny males would be happy either way, men at home or men at war. Absolute horror stories on what the military has put their women through not too long ago (mostly hearsay about rape); I'm of the opinion that the chain of command obviously needs a big change (except that they're mostly self-regulating -_-).


I didn't say extinct, but yeah. The main problem I have with your argument is, while yes, we may not agree, I'm not treating women like fragile creatures (hence the reason I too the time to point out that men were simply more expendible, rather in a similar manner to how you've been saying we're treating women like fragile baby-makers; I'm surprised you didn't note the irony).


You said the society. The whole society. If you're going to make broad, sweeping statements, expect them to be addressed since this is, after all, a debate. My hypothetical is unlikely, and I admit that (and still don't change my position yet), but you exaggerate and amplify the problem by claiming sexist military policies are because of a view that a whole society shares. No, I don't think so.

Go back and read your first post on the subject again. You're talking about a country protecting its survival by making sure that there are enough women on hand to keep the population going. And how it's better to have ten women popping out babies every nine months for every man impregnating them than to have ten men for every woman. And how that's a good reason for keeping women as a group out of combat, with no other considerations except that they're women.

Those things are all sweeping generalizations about how a society should protect its interests and propagate itself. If the harem scenario ever came about, it would affect the whole society (and the harem society is the one I was talking about in the post that you're nitpicking now). And it affects a whole society when women are told they can't do something for the "good reason" that the people running the country would rather have them at home just in case we need them to procreate.

I'm not making anything up here. This is all stuff I'm pulling out of your posts. I am prone to paraphrasing in a snarky and sometimes hyperbolic manner for dramatic effect, but that doesn't really change the content of your argument or the validity of my points against it.

Also, I picked on your "expendable" line in my most recent post. :p

I'm pointing out something that would be pointed out to any woman who wants to join the army. It would keep me from joining though because no matter how things should be ideally, in the matter it's what really happens. While things are improving, I'm not willing to sacrifice my wellbeing to just be told 'you're a woman in a man's field, what do you expect?'

That may or may not happen, but it's happened on a smaller scale. I participate in a lot of male-dominated activities and I see no reason to stay out because there are no other girls, because nothing is happening to my welfare, and whenever I complain about sexual harassment, the response is usually 'what did you expect if you play with the boys?' :/ Nonetheless it won't keep me from doing what I enjoy. If I wanted to join the army though I probably wouldn't for my own safety from this. If I wanted to join the army I'd be willing to accept the dangers that can be reasonably expected for a soldier, not additional harm stemming simply from my sex.

Exactly. And you're doing the same thing when you say that women shouldn't be allowed in the military. Thank god it isn't up to you to decide what's best for other people.

Like I said before, that's just unnecessarily handicapping yourself. Wouldn't your military be stronger if you had all the able-bodied, intelligent, skilled, disciplined people you could get?


Now I would disagree with that on account of we have things like marriage and monogamy, where people generally like to pair up in committed relationships before they go having kids. So in that case it doesn't really matter whether there's a shortage of women or men, somebody's not going to be able to find a mate. And as we saw in the real-life Bavaria situation, the problem with the lopsided gender ratio was not a massive decrease in the populace's ability to reproduce, but a huge spike in the percentage of unmarried women who were getting knocked up. And I'm not sure what kind of social programs you're envisioning, but it seems like having a lot of unplanned out-of-wedlock births would put a certain amount of strain on both the women who are having them and the system as a whole.

Even if you don't take the ten-women-for-every-man harem setup literally, the success of the scenario you're describing relies on having men impregnating multiple women. Which I'm guessing most women wouldn't really go for. Unless they're like Mormons or something.

And the patronizing part was the "I'm sorry you feel slighted" and the bit about how I was supposedly "seeking offense." The classic "callin' you emotional to distract from the actual issues and make you defensive" approach. Which may not have been conscious on your part, but that's how it came across.

Why thank ye. 3nodding I'm not ashamed of my opinion though. And to stop for a second and to look at a grand scale, if I were to be seen as misogynistic or closed-minded for my opinions on military practices regarding women, there's less wrong with me than those I'm arguing with.

Sure it happens. But are you saying that's a good thing? There's all sorts of evidence that children from single-parent homes are at a disadvantage compared to children whose parents are in committed relationships. Single mothers can have an incredibly tough time making ends meet. Many would argue that welfare is a burden on the economic system. Are you saying you want to bank the future of your country's population on encouraging infidelity and single motherhood? Because you are saying that you think it would be good to have an imbalance of women, which would only encourage this kind of thing to happen even more than it does now. Whereas if it weren't only men who were dying in combat, the gender ratio would remain more balanced and we could avoid contributing to this problem altogether.

There's also the fact, which I would have thought was obvious enough not to have to mention, that we don't need every woman in the country to reproduce in order to keep the population going. Even if lots of women die in combat, there will be others who didn't want to join the military who will still be at home having kids. And the odds of women ever outnumbering men in the service are slim to none. So all in all, the policy of keeping all women out of military combat to "protect the country's population" is simply misguided, ineffective, unnecessary, and akin to cutting off your nose because you think having a huge gaping hole in your face will help you breathe easier.



The whole concept of keeping women out of the military because they are able to have babies places that ability above any other qualification that might make them good soldiers. So what if you're brilliant, strong, patriotic, technically skilled, or a good leader? We're not letting you in the military because you have a uterus and ovaries, and we might need you to use them someday to keep the population going. That's the definition of discrimination, and any country that actually enforced that kind of policy would indeed be telling women that they are more valuable as breeding stock than anything else.

And for the record, that bit you quoted there was a mockery of the kind of sexist government policy we're talking about, not a jab at you personally. Although if you believe in that kind of discrimination so strongly that you're willing to defend it to the grave despite all of the damning points against it, you probably shouldn't be surprised if people wonder about your actual values. :p

Well I'm not sure how much more cornering you want to take, but if you ask me I've been ripping this thing to shreds since we started. biggrin And frankly you've been doing an awful lot of grasping at straws trying to quibble with the more tangential parts of my posts while conveniently leaving out the meatiest parts of my argument. Which, if the best you're hoping for is that I get tired of repeating myself and call a draw, might be all you need to do. biggrin


But why make that sacrifice at all? Part of my point here is that it's not even necessary to protect women's lives by banning them all from the military. It's just not needed. Humanity will go on even if there are women on the front lines, even if some of those women die. The fact that it's a blatantly discriminatory practice that has definite short-term drawbacks and could potentially do more harm than good long-term is hardly the only argument here.


Then why not let some of those women become "expendable" along with the men in the name of helping to protect the country? Since they're not going to be contributing to the regrowth anyway?

Hey, there's a potential solution to your "the military gets pwned and everyone dies so we have to repopulate" problem - don't turn away people who would make your military stronger just because they have baby-makin' parts.


I'm impressed with your knowledge of anatomy, but once again you're sidestepping the real point. So I'll say it again in different words: It just seems really dumb to cause so many real, immediate problems for yourself (you being the country/society/government/whatever), and to marginalize an entire gender by reducing them to the sum of their reproductive organs, and try to justify it by imagining there being a small shred of a possibility that some unspecified day in the unknown future we may face an apocalypse and have our entire military wiped out. And to further imagine that the only way we can survive and rebuild is to have every available womb on home soil ready for impregnation by whatever male happens to want the job.

...Do you really not see anything at all ludicrous about all of this? biggrin