135 réponses à ce sujet

[Herr Uhl]

tmp7704 wrote...

Herr Uhl wrote...

So why does weight classes exist? Having muscle means you can do the same things with equal or less technique. There is a big advantage in having more muscle mass, up to a certain point.

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Weight_class

"Weight classes are divisions of competition used to match competitors against others of their own size. This reduces the exclusion of smaller athletes in sports where physical size gives a significant advantage."

it's much more about the arm reach, height advantage and such than the muscle mass per se. Weight just happens to be tied to these factors, allowing for easier grouping.

...yes. That is what I'm also saying with "up to a certain point". Physical size is included in my reasoning.

[Wereparrot]

tmp7704 wrote...

Wereparrot wrote...

In On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman briefly mentions that female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces have been officially prohibited from serving in close combat military operations since 1948. (However, in 2001, subsequent to publication, women did begin serving in IDF combat units on an experimental basis.) The reason for removing female soldiers from the front lines was due less to the performance of female soldiers, and more due to the behavior of the male infantrymen after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable, protective, instinctual aggression, severely degrading the unit's combat effectiveness.

You refute this?

Do you refute this?

No. Why would I? I never said a woman cannot serve due to inferior performance.

[tmp7704]

Herr Uhl wrote...

...yes. That is what I'm also saying with "up to a certain point". Physical size is included in my reasoning.

Well, you were only mentioning the muscle mass, so it was easy to interpret it that's the only factor you were taking into account.

[Wereparrot]

adneate wrote...

Wereparrot wrote...
The battlefield is not the place for experimentation, so in the name of prudence I think it should stay this way.   

Actually it is, Commanders change the way things are and experiment with pretty much everything all the time. New tactics and strategies are developed or repurposed all the time. Racial intergration was an "experiment" that was conducted during the Korean War, should they not have done that?

Racial integration is a bit different. A man is a man, regardless of skin colour. 'Experimenting' with women is a different matter: what if a male soldier cannot remain calm and disciplined under fire when the woman next to him has just lost her arm? 

Modifié par Wereparrot, 03 novembre 2011 - 04:03 .

[tmp7704]

Wereparrot wrote...

No. Why would I? I never said a woman cannot serve due to inferior performance.

Indeed. However, you've added your "it's foolish to argue with common military reasoning" remark to argument about how women are likely to perform worse than men in such roles, and without clarification that common military reasoning has little to do with that. That made an impression you're agreeing with it rather than bringing attention to different (and in a way, reverse) aspect of it.

In any case, that seems explained now.

[tmp7704]

Wereparrot wrote...

what if a male soldier cannot remain calm and disciplined under fire when the woman next to him has just lost her arm? 

I'd say this man shouldn't be in the army then, due to weak mentality.

[Wereparrot]

tmp7704 wrote...

Wereparrot wrote...

what if a male soldier cannot remain calm and disciplined under fire when the woman next to him has just lost her arm? 

I'd say this man shouldn't be in the army then, due to weak mentality.

It's not a question of mentality, but rather one of natural psychological make-up inherent in most if not all men. This is not PTSD, which is a case of mentality.

[tmp7704]

Wereparrot wrote...

It's not a question of mentality, but rather one of natural psychological make-up inherent in most if not all men.

It's a question of being unable to get the supposed "natural instincts" under control. Which is the question of mental strength.

Modifié par tmp7704, 03 novembre 2011 - 04:17 .

[whykikyouwhy]

@Wereparrot - A male soldier may not be able to remain calm if another male soldier next to him has lost an arm. While you may be trying to make the argument that men are societally conditioned to protect women and therefore would be more prone to a severe reaction when a woman is injured (not sure if that's what you're trying to convey...), discipline under pressure and horrific conditions can be independent of gender, on the part of both soldiers.

[Centauri2002]

Oh not this tired old argument again?

All I'm seeing at the moment is the argument that women shouldn't be in combat situations because men have a problem dealing with them being there. Isn't that a problem with the men then? It's about time people got their head out of the dark ages and realised women aren't weak and incapable and need nothing but a man to protect them.

And... possibly drop this argument. It goes around and around in circles. >.>

Modifié par centauri2002, 03 novembre 2011 - 04:20 .

[adneate]

Wereparrot wrote...
Racial integration is a bit different. A man is a man, regardless of skin colour. 'Experimenting' with women is a different matter: what if a male soldier cannot remain calm and disciplined under fire when the woman next to him has just lost her arm? 

It wasn't any different at the time the exact same reasons were used, the same what ifs used to forecast unit cohesion breakdown. It's a matter of culture and training, combat in and of itself is almost beyond human mental endurance my own PTSD will attest to that. We already have the exact same scenarios you describe, wounded friends screaming in agony for help and the counter-part is just as mentally out of control as ever. Filled with an overwhelming desire to break cover and rush out there, it's a common tale. It's overcome not by forcing the soldiers in an infantry unit to never be friends it's overcome by training and leadership by Officers and NCOs. When that desire strikes, when adrenaline flows in your veins and everything seems out of control you are trained and conditioned to follow the orders of the NCO and act purely on the memory of your training. Even then some people will still break cover to aid a fallen comrade, if you want perfect soldiers then you better build an army of robots. Otherwise you just have people and they are flawed and won't act according to textbooks you quote.

I personally won't deny anyone who's fit and capable of serving just because they have the wrong sex organs or the wrong orientation, what matters is their desire to be a professional and do their job every single day.

[Wereparrot]

tmp7704 wrote...

Wereparrot wrote...

It's not a question of mentality, but rather one of natural psychological make-up inherent in most if not all men.

It's a question of being unable to get the supposed "natural instincts" under control. Which is the question of mentality.

I doubt military training concerns itself with the eradication of in-built attitudes to the opposite sex. I'm not sure they would succeed if it did; psychology is not an army's field of expertise. It would require a lot of extra training, and the male soldier would be far more susceptible to PTSD.  After all, any given army has bigger things on it's plate.

The people in favour of women fighting in the infantry are asking an awful lot. I suggest we leave army recruitment and make-up to the generals. 

[tmp7704]

adneate wrote...

combat in and of itself is almost beyond human mental endurance

Precisely. The very notion of sticking around in situations where it spells certain death goes against the most basic human instinct. Yet we have no problem asking/forcing men in that sort of situation and expect them to cope, as the core part of being a soldier... but to expect them to also cope with reaction to a sight of a wounded woman? Unthinkable.

[Wereparrot]

whykikyouwhy wrote...

@Wereparrot - A male soldier may not be able to remain calm if another male soldier next to him has lost an arm. While you may be trying to make the argument that men are societally conditioned to protect women and therefore would be more prone to a severe reaction when a woman is injured (not sure if that's what you're trying to convey...), discipline under pressure and horrific conditions can be independent of gender, on the part of both soldiers.

True, but how much more so when faced with a woman who has lost her arm? If you are a soldier in that situation, by the time you find out it could be too late and the lives of so many others could be jeopardised by your own rash actions.

[megski]

I think that the warden army in DA is much like any other modern army in the respect that women just aren't as numerous. Every society, even ones as modern as ours, still has gender roles. Men have less responsibility in caring for the home and raising children, I think this is probably the biggest reason why there are fewer females in the wardens.

There is an undeniable physiological difference between men and women, that is why there is a double standard for physical fitness in the modern military. There are exceptions however.

The biggest issue with females in strenuous physical situations is the loss of body mass. While I buy some of this, I don't buy all of it. If I, as a lady, am put into situations where my calorie intake is far less than the calories I burn, I'm going to begin losing weight somewhere. Since I myself am a tiny person and have very little body fat to begin with, I am going to begin losing something, probably the fatty tissue in my breasts (hehehehe). The next thing to probably go will be my reproductive system, because I'm not using it, which is what I don't necessarily buy. This is the biggest reason why females are limited in say special forces operations and infantry operations. If I'm a special forces soldier and my ovaries have shriveled up and died because I've walked across Africa, then that is a disability that I've acquired during my military service and I deserve to be compensated. By not allowing females to serve in situations like this, it is one less thing the military is liable for. However, this does not mean females are without purpose. Recently the military has begun to use females in more dangerous situations, the biggest reason being females are far less threatening and are easier for civilians to talk to. So, while as a womens I may not be able to make a trek across Africa, but I am able to to perform smaller scaled combat operations.

[tmp7704]

Wereparrot wrote...

I doubt military training concerns itself with the eradication of in-built attitudes to the opposite sex.

They're already concerning themselves with eradication of in-built attitudes to the survival, aggression, obedience and multitude of others. What's the difference?

[megski]

It's not so much physical injury that bothers men, at least the men I have spoken to. The things that they can't bare to think about are rape, sodomy, and the fact that females will more than likely be the first to be abused in a hostage or POW situation because they are seen as the smaller, weaker sex. Women like Jessica Lynch do not help our situation.

[BigEvil]

SkittlesKat96 wrote...
I found it to be a bit weird not seeing any female GW's at Ostagar.

After reading this topic (well, before it devolved into arguing with virtually no references to actual DA lore or even the word Wardens) I still can't wrap my head around the idea that what we saw in Origins is the norm for the Grey Warden order.

At Ostagar we see all of three Grey Wardens if we include our PC, who can be female, the other two being Duncan and Alistair. While Daveth and Jory are Grey Warden recruits neither successfully becomes a proper Warden but that's still only five people, one of which has a chance of being female. The rest of the Ferelden Grey Wardens are in the Army Camp which we do not have access to, and there's nothing in the cutscenes of the battle which shows if any of the soldiers around Cailan and Duncan are Grey Wardens or just Cailan's personal retinue.

Ok, so Alistair says there aren't many female Grey Wardens and he might imply there were none in the current Ferelden group (I can't remember if he outright states that or not) that doesn't mean much. How many GWs were in Ferelden anyway? A dozen? Twenty?

Even throughout the whole DA franchise, books, games and all, we've hardly seen any Grey Wardens and several of them have been women. There's a thousand or more GWs in the Anderfels, over two hundred in Orlais and presumably big numbers elsewhere. We've seen a handful and while out of that handful there were more men than women it just seems to me that unless a dev states something on the matter there's not enough information to say one way or another that there are hardly any women in the Grey Wardens. It would be more accurate to say that there are more men than women in the Ferelden Grey Wardens, since they're the only ones we have much information on.

[Wereparrot]

adneate wrote...

Wereparrot wrote...
Racial integration is a bit different. A man is a man, regardless of skin colour. 'Experimenting' with women is a different matter: what if a male soldier cannot remain calm and disciplined under fire when the woman next to him has just lost her arm? 

It wasn't any different at the time the exact same reasons were used, the same what ifs used to forecast unit cohesion breakdown.

I can't imagine why, and I'm not being sarcastic. It's obvious that men and women are phsycologically different, and equally obvious that the black man and the white man are phsycologically similar.
 

It's a matter of culture and training, combat in and of itself is almost beyond human mental endurance my own PTSD will attest to that.

Some people are less susceptible to PTSD than others. Any one case of PTSD is enough for us to take measures to limit it's occurence, and that includes the barring of women from the infantry.
 

We already have the exact same scenarios you describe, wounded friends screaming in agony for help and the counter-part is just as mentally out of control as ever. Filled with an overwhelming desire to break cover and rush out there, it's a common tale. It's overcome not by forcing the soldiers in an infantry unit to never be friends it's overcome by training and leadership by Officers and NCOs. When that desire strikes, when adrenaline flows in your veins and everything seems out of control you are trained and conditioned to follow the orders of the NCO and act purely on the memory of your training. Even then some people will still break cover to aid a fallen comrade, if you want perfect soldiers then you better build an army of robots. Otherwise you just have people and they are flawed and won't act according to textbooks you quote.

I personally won't deny anyone who's fit and capable of serving just because they have the wrong sex organs or the wrong orientation, what matters is their desire to be a professional and do their job every single day.

That's all very well, but it strikes me that your argument is based primarily on the basis that 'it happens anyway, so why not?'. It does happen anyway, but I for one would be reluctant to test a unit's discipline with the presence of females.

[tmp7704]

BigEvil wrote...

How many GWs were in Ferelden anyway? A dozen? Twenty?

If i understand it right, there's only small group of the wardens in Ferelden due to the order being only recently allowed to return to the country.

For what's worth, i don't remember seneschal Varel making any remarks and/or objecting to female warden candidates in the Awakening (and there can be up to three of them there) So going by that you could presume there isn't any inherent reasons not to treat them equally.

[jlb524]

Wereparrot wrote...
I can't imagine why, and I'm not being sarcastic. It's obvious that men and women are phsycologically different, and equally obvious that the black man and the white man are phsycologically similar.

At the time, most did not believe that so it wasn't obvious to them.  There are still people today that don't believe that.

[megski]

Wereparrot wrote...
That's all very well, but it strikes me that your argument is based primarily on the basis that 'it happens anyway, so why not?'. It does happen anyway, but I for one would be reluctant to test a unit's discipline with the presence of females.

I think you're not realizing that the presence of females, whether in combat or not, IS a big issue.  The military doesn't have to test unit cohesion with females, because there are already females present in most units.  

[adneate]

Wereparrot wrote...
It does happen anyway, but I for one would be reluctant to test a unit's discipline with the presence of females.

If it's an all volunteer force (Which the Israeli Army isn't) then they are all professionals who willingly choose to serve and they will do their jobs regardless of who they're asked to serve with. The Canadian Army has no restrictions on what women can and can't do, a female officer was killed in action during the war in Afghanistan and two more died when when their LAVs were hit by IEDs. In neither of those cases did the other soldiers lose all control and throw themselves at the Taliban in a suicidal Banzai attack.