Sunday, January 17, 2016

Why Women Should Not Be in Combat

I know it’s not very politically-correct to say this, but women should never be placed in combat positions in the military. Women, by their very design, are not as well-suited for battle conditions as men. This includes multiple aspects of their physical and mental design.

For example, the forearms of women have a deeper notch in the upper arm bone that makes their forearms more flexible. Because of this, women can move their arms further back than straight at the elbow. Men's arms do not reach 180 degrees, and this is a strength feature. A man will be able to lift more weight than a woman, even if their arm muscles were of the same mass, just because of this alone. But in addition to that, a man's bones are thicker and tougher than a woman's as well.

Of course, the idea of equal muscle mass is an illusion because the biology of men (including much higher levels of testosterone) means they can put on much more muscle mass than women and they lose it more slowly (meaning it's easier to stay in shape). When it comes to sheer strength, women simply cannot compete with men on a general basis. Some women are stronger than some men, of course, but men as a group have a much greater potential for strength than women. Few women have the ability to carry a grown man off the battlefield or to carry the large packs of supplies they need for a mission. They simply don't have the strength.

Women also have hips that are wider to allow for bearing children, but those same pelvic bones are less well designed for running fast, which can be important in evading enemy fire, keeping up with the pace of the group, or charging enemy lines.

Speaking of their pelvic region, women also have a genital area that is much more vulnerable to infection under dirty and primitive conditions often seen on the battlefield. A woman has a large surface area of moist mucous membrane in that region and a much shorter urethra, both of which make her far more vulnerable to infection that can travel easily to internal body regions and become serious or even life-threatening. The design of male genitalia makes men able to handle less sanitary conditions for longer periods without serious health risks.

Of course, women also have a monthly bleeding issue that makes hygiene and privacy more difficult without sanitary bathroom facilities. And not only do women need to keep that area especially clean at that particular time of the month, but even daily tasks like urination are more difficult for women. Having to squat makes women not only require different facilities and better sanitation for their elimination activities, but makes them more vulnerable during a surprise attack. A man surprised mid-stream is still on his feet, ready to run or charge. A woman...not so much.

Even the skin of women is less adapted for battle. Men have fewer blood vessels to the skin than women, which means that men bleed less from superficial wounds. Obviously, anyone can bleed to death if the wound is severe enough, but the lesser blood loss from superficial wounds means men are more likely to survive and keep fighting even after being wounded.

Men have a larger lung capacity than women, even at the same height and body mass. This gives them a greater ability to intake oxygen. Men also have a greater percentage of red blood cells in their blood, allowing them to transport more oxygen to their muscles when needed. These features give men greater endurance.

All of these individual features I have mentioned point out potential liabilities for single-cause injury or death. However, women also have less of an ability to stand up to the long-term physical strain of being in combat and are more likely than men to experience physical breakdown and require medical care for less quantifiable reasons.

In addition to the many physical reasons that women are less adapted to battle conditions, women are also less mentally prepared for the horrors of battle. Not only does the physical strain weigh more heavily on them and cause physical breakdown faster in women, but the same is true mentally. Women are more prone to mental issues like PTSD in the wake of battlefield stresses. The horrors of war will break down many men, but women are even more vulnerable to this side effect.

Women are designed to be nurturers. Men are designed to be warriors. Their physical and mental designs reflect this. Women have strengths that men do not have, but men also have strengths that women do not have. Being an effective soldier on the battlefield is not in keeping with a woman’s design.

Because women are not designed for battle, putting a woman into combat is a risk to both the woman herself and to the rest of her unit. Her physical and mental health will be more threatened by what she encounters than a man in the same situation. Thus, battle is more dangerous to her. But when any member of a unit is compromised in speed, endurance, strength, or mental fortitude or when they are injured or killed, it places a greater risk upon all of them as they try to make up for the lack and protect their fellow soldiers. Having a woman in the unit is a liability that simply wouldn’t exist if that woman were replaced with a man.

I've already identified many reasons from biology that women should not be in combat, but there are many other issues that could be put forth. I haven't even mentioned here the significant challenges involved in men and women sharing close quarters, the instinct of men to protect women even when it would not be advisable in a military context and the threat this poses to male soldiers, the very real risks of rape to women in the military (both from fellow soldiers and from the enemy if they were to be captured), the need for privacy, the sexual tension, the cost of separate sleeping and bathroom facilities, and many other relevant issues.

What it comes down to is that, if the military were just for show and didn't engage on the battlefield, it wouldn’t matter whether we had women in it. But if the military is a serious force designed to engage in battle efficiently and effectively, then for purely practical and ethical reasons alone, women should not be part of its combat forces.


19 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It was considered a shame to Israel that their leader would not go into battle as God had said unless a woman went with him. Deborah even said that because Barak would not obey and go without her, that the victory would come by the hand of a woman. And we don't know that Deborah did any fighting. She may have been more of a mascot than a fighter.

      There's certainly no reason to take one example of a woman who may or may not have been fighting in battle as recorded in the Bible and throw out everything else in the Bible about war and everything we know from biology and mental health and practicality in order to put women in combat.

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    2. I don't think generalization should be made based on something as broad as Gender. In the Church there is neither male or female.

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    3. I pointed out several biological and practical reasons why women are not designed for combat. Do you have a counter argument, or do you just not like the facts?

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    4. @ JaredMithrandir

      "I don't think generalization should be made based on something as broad as Gender. In the Church there is neither male or female."

      Gender is a most excellent way to generalize. Although it is true their is no gender division IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE CHURCH (<-- not shouty capitals, meant to be italics) meaning vertically, we still are very much alive in our female/male forms WHILE LIVING HERE IN THE FLESH. To deny the difference between female and male is to deny our humanness.

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    5. You've acknowledged acceptions to those general trends. If you support having a military at all (I'm not sure I do) then you shouldn't deny willing volunteer who prove themselves capable base don any general trends.

      Also Robyn because of The Fall some people are assigned the wrong Gender at birth.

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    6. Some people assigned the wrong gender at birth??? Wow. Um, the biological sex of a person is part of who they are. People can either accept their biological sex or be in denial of reality. But nobody is born the wrong gender. That's ridiculous. You are what you are.

      I do think we should deny military volunteers when they are females trying to be in combat because they make the military less efficient, more costly, and more dangerous for everyone involved. We deny people with physical disabilities and mental disabilities for those reasons. I think being female is enough of a liability to warrant denying them too.

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    7. I believe in the Soul and Spirit, so now I don't believe Gender is decided only be biology, because I believe God's word.
      http://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-refusal-to-accept-claims-of.html

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    8. God's word doesn't give any indication that a person can be born with a soul that doesn't match their body. Seeing that God grants the soul, to claim that a person's soul has a gender that doesn't match their body's sex is to say God messed up.

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    9. Did yo just imply believing in a preexistence? The Soul is Created when The Body is according to The Bible.

      God only directly created two people, Adam and Eve. We are just imperfect copies of them, because of the Fall we see people being born Blind or born with all kinds of other mutations. Yet bigots in the Church insist on not accepting that something go wrong in terms of Gender which is decided my merely two Chromosomes.

      Brain scans have proven that Trans people's brains are not wired like their Assigned Gender.

      Something does not have to be explicitly mentioned in The Bible to exist.

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    10. No, I didn't imply anything about preexistence. I said a person's soul and body can't be of different genders.

      Yes, things can go wrong with genetics and people are born with all kinds of genetic mistakes and even deformities. In some cases, the sex of a person isn't clear because of real genetic problems like being XXY, but that's not the same thing as saying a person's soul is male, but their body is female or vice versa. The soul is never the opposite of what the body is. I don't even know that the soul has a gender. The body does because of biology.

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    11. As for people with brain scans that are not gender typical, that doesn't mean they are a woman in a man's body or a man in a woman's body. Their brains are simply not gender typical. There's a certain amount of variation in the brain between individuals, including a lot of overlap between men and women. Just because a woman's brain is less like the average woman's and more like a typical man's doesn't make her actually a man. Her brain may just be on the fringes of a woman's variation.

      It's also possible that acting like a man makes your brain look like a man's when scanned, even if you're biologically female ans so forth. In that case, the study's findings mean only that the brain structure is influenced by behavior (something we already knew). Basically, transgenders might be making their brains less typical by believing and acting as if they were the opposite gender rather than their brains dictating how they will believe and act.

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  2. Oh so true. This one point I worry about, for the safety of our military when women are added. Men do indeed instinctively want to protect the woman, even putting himself in harms way for the girl. Even though they will go the extra mile for any soldier serving side by side, that instinct could be the difference between life and death for any soldier.

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  3. I agree 100% with this post. Women belong in the home raising the children they are blessed with.

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  4. In Isreal the woman serve right along the men , Woman now seve on Submarines , woman are equal to men in all things they fly fighter jets, they command naval ships,, to deny them the right to seve in combat roles minimizes them

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    1. Why would it minimize women to admit that they aren't physically or mentally as suited for combat as men? It doesn't diminish men to admit that they aren't physically or mentally as suited to nurture children. Men and women have different strengths.

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  5. As Anonymous says up there, women serve in the Israeli military and somehow they seem to do alright. Maybe women aren't as fragile and delicate as you seem to think they are. They're every bit as capable of killing and withstanding the horrors of war. Some women aren't particularly great nurturers either, and some men are very affectionate and fatherly.

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  6. The role of women in the Israeli military has been highly exaggerated.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/25/womens-combat-roles-in-israel-defense-forces-exagg/?page=all

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  7. For those wanting some scientific evidence supporting the fact that women are not as well suited for combat, take a look this summary of a study done by the military. Units with females did not perform as well as all-male units and women were more than twice as likely as men to sustain injuries. They also noted a distinct difference in both upper and lower body strength between men and women that resulted in more stress-related injuries among women and a lower level of oxygen uptake, which affected ability to carry heavy loads.

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-marines-women-20150912-story.html

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