MRAs often complain bitterly that men have to register for the draft and women don’t. Ironically, many MRAs – sometimes the very same people – also think that women shouldn’t be allowed in the armed forces at all, or at the very least should be barred from direct combat.
One MRA who’s staunchly against women in combat is a Redditor calling himself Demonspawn. In a recent comment he sets forth “four huge reasons” why. The first is a doozy:
The vagina. You can’t keep it clean in battlefield conditions. Military regulations state that women on extended training exercises must have access to garrison or equivalent facilities for hygiene at least once every X number of days (usually 7). Why? Because otherwise you run a very high risk of a vaginal infection and can die from it. Those facilities cannot be guaranteed on the battlefield and therefore it is an even greater risk to women’s lives to use them as battlefield troops.
I’m surprised he forgot to mention the chronic problem of centipedes in the vagina.
The rest of his reasons are equally stupid, if not quite as amusing. Number two:
Public Relations. … Have you not read the articles when women soldiers die and it’s a big deal, while more dead male soldiers is just business as usual? Public support for war cannot be sustained in the face of massive female soldier casualties.
And three:
Men get themselves killed overprotecting women. This is the #1 reason Israel deintegrated their troops.
Yeah, it’s a terrible thing when soldiers try to protect one another.
His final reason returns us once again to the whole vagina thing:
Women tend to “get pregnant” when leaving for overseas trips… That destroys unit cohesion. Research the “pregnant navy” syndrome. One ship had over 40% of it’s female sailors suddenly become pregnant before an overseas trip.
I did a Google search for “pregnant navy.” In 2007, according to one article I found, roughly 11 percent of female soldiers had to be shifted to shore because they were pregnant; it’s usually less than that.
Women: trouble when their vaginas are infected, trouble when they’re clean. Why do we even let them leave the house?
Thanks to MuForceShoelace for posting the link to Demonspawn’s comment on the AgainstMensRights subreddit.
EDIT: I misread an article I originally cited about female crew members on a supply ship getting pregnant during the Gulf war. The percentage who got pregnant was 10%, not more than half. (In my defense, the article was badly worded.) I’ve removed the erroneous material.
the term we used was “sand in your clit.” not vagina. just saying.
Well, that makes it all make sense then.
katz: Totally, because getting sand in one’s foreskin, totes not distracting. And sand all over your balls, downright fun.
@mythago: Bullshitting? My stance has been the same for years.
1) Women do get slack when it comes to pushups compared to men. Older men also get slack against younger men.
2) I am well aware of the PT requirements based on age. This article was about gender, not age. Hence I focused more on the gender aspect.
3) I didn’t say gender norming was slack and age norming was “A OK”. I pointed out the possible rationale that bureaucrats decided on why older men have to do less work than younger men. (e.g weaker bones, poorer health). That doesn’t make it is my rationale for doing so.
4) I actually pointed out that women do roughly the same situps. Also, I said women get an extra 3 minutes on the 2 mile run. The only part where women have to do 50+% less is in pushups.
5) I am against “norming” in general. Regardless of if you have a vagina or penis or whatever.
@Pecunium:My stance is this:
If the PT test exists, all soldiers should be required to do the same one. No norming of any kind. However, if the armed forces decides on a more efficient method of testing and screening recruits, I am all for it just as long as everyone gets held to the same standard.
If a DS says to a male solder “You have 45 seconds to double time your ass over to that wall and lay covering fire on that target” I don’t expect the DS to say “You have 1 minute and 15 seconds…” to a female soldier.
The PT test might be “pointless” but if the men have to go through a pointless exercise, then I think it is only fair to hold women to that same pointless standard.
Brandon: The PT test is relevant, to general fitness.
As a test of general fitness it is normed.
You want to do away with the norming.
That would make the test unfair (because of physiological differences in male/female anatomy). This is why I say you are willing to rig it against women, under the rubric of fairness.
No one has said that, in the task list for any MOS women should be given a lower standard. I pointed out that in some MOSs (e.g. all the medical MOSs) women are held to a higher standard than is required for the job they will actually be allowed to hold, because all the indoor MOS (like respiratory therapist, and radiologist) are additional to the Combat Medic MOS.
So women aren’t being cut any slack.
You just refuse to accept that there are actual differences, which need to be accounted for if women are to be given the same basic opportunity to join.
The PT test is pointless, when it comes to the actual ability to do the job. When normed it is perfectly useful as a rough assessment of the soldiers physical fitness (which is what the regulation says it is for).
What you are arguing for is a higher standard for women.
If the average male (aged 17-21) can do 35 push-ups, and the Army demands he do 42, that’s a standard which is above the average, but in the realm of reasonable given the general demands of the service.
If the average female can do 13 push-ups, then demanding 19 is also reasonable (and, as a percentage still a slightly higher standard).
To insists that she do 42, is an unreasonable demand. It would allow the average male to enter the Army, and require that any female who wanted to enlist has to be an exception to the norm. An outlier.
That isn’t fair. It’s a form of apartheid. It says, only if you are woman who is capable of being a serious athlete can you join the army, while saying, “If you are an average man, we’ll take you.”
To add insult to that injury you are telling those women they are barely the equals of the men.
To increase the injury they are denied the chance to enter the specialties which are required for access to the top slots in the profession (esp. if they are officers).
This is what you call, “fair”.
It’s not.
That makes even less sense. Rudimentary anatomy, you do not has it.
“That makes even less sense. Rudimentary anatomy, you do not has it.”
I guess technically you could get it under your clit hood (NSFW!), but I can’t say that’s ever happened to me, not even at the beach.
Molly Ren: I thought of that just as I hit post. But unless you’re committed to being naked in a really sandy area, I’m not seeing how it could be much of a problem. (I spent most of my life close to water and beaches and have never had this happen. Ever.)
Brandon: This is purely a point of technique. I’m trying, with this one, to show you some of the problems you have in making your case for things. I am not, in this comment making any arguments about the question we’ve been talking about, it just happens to be the handy example.
3) I didn’t say gender norming was slack and age norming was “A OK”. I pointed out the possible rationale that bureaucrats decided on why older men have to do less work than younger men. (e.g weaker bones, poorer health). That doesn’t make it is my rationale for doing so.
What you did was defend the one position, while not admitting any parallel to the other.
You didn’t, initially, say: Everyone, no matter what age, no matter what gender, should do the same PT test.
You gave reasons for the older men being allowed a lower standard.
You could have said, then and there, what your standards would be. That you didn’t is a form of silence, and silence = assent. When you added the explanation it moves to being a minor apologia.
If you look at this instance, you will see that the positions of myself, mythago, etc. haven’t changed. We pretty much put it all out in the first instance. When new arguments were added, we answered them, by showing that they didn’t actually address the point we made in the beginning.
It’s that sort of methodological error which leads to you getting reactions you don’t seem to expect. If you think a policy is stupid, unfair, poorly thought out, etc., you would be better served (and more likely to get less firm; and perhaps less oppositional) reactions if you didn’t assume people could read your mind. All we have is your words.
Brandon:
Hmm, I hope that boner went down before you got to work. XD
Bagelsan, have you ever seen that truly horrible game called Battle Raper? I feel like it was made for Brandon.
Even now after I haven’t been in the service for a while and haven’t been working out as much as I should…I bet I could still take down and disable most if not all the female soldiers.
I missed that. He’s behind the times; all soldiers are required to take/practice combatives (ie. hand to hand fighting, using a system which is based on brazilian ju-jitsu, with some krav-maga; which is new since he was in. I’ve been in combatives, level one training (the most basic) where a two minute open grapple had myself and the female soldier I was fighting travel a wide zig-zag of more than fifty yards across an open field; wrestling the entire time. We were both bruised and strained when we were done. Then we went back for more training. A non trivial number of level two, and a significant number of level three sessions end in the loser blacking out.
Except in combat arms units, all combatives training is mixed gender. As I said earlier, the 24th Infantry Division has division wide (and therefore open to females) competitions. Women have won them, beating the best competitors from the infantry battalions in the division.
So I don’t really think Brandon is as likely to take down and disable most of the female soldiers, and I guarantee he can’t take down all of them (not least because some of them are in training in other martial arts). A lot of them have been in combat zones, a non-trivial number have been in firefights. All of them know they could end up in those areas, and they train for it.
TL;DR: Brandon’s arrogant statement about how he could probably take down current soldiers even though he hasn’t been working out is full of hot air.
But I guess we knew that already.
@Moewicus: Can you substantiate that claim at all? No you can’t.
I have been in a few fights in my younger days. Even men taking full blown swings at my head weren’t all that painful.
While I don’t particularly like fighting, I am pretty sure even women punching or kicking me would be easily laughed at. Most of them just don’t have the strength to inflict any kind of meaningful pain on me or take me off my feet.
Just imagine a 5’6″ 130lb woman going up against a Patriots linebacker and you will get the idea of it.
It would take one exceptional woman to be able to win in a hand-to hand fight with me.
@Cassandra: I have never laid an unwanted hand on a woman and I have no plans on it. Hurting a woman doesn’t say very much about someones character.
@Pencunim: Taking martial arts doesn’t automatically make you a better fighter. I took co-ed ju-jitsu and every woman was unable to even keep me in holds without me breaking free easily. And this were women who have been training for years. The women in the class couldn’t even trip me nor could they force me into a vulnerable position. They were basically fighting a brick wall. They put more strain and damage on themselves then they inflicted on me. And just to make sure I didn’t end up hurting them, I held back and used only enough force to defeat whatever they were doing (holds, grapples, throws).
Shorter Brandon: *continues jerking it*
I totally believe that whole brick wall thing. It’s what I feel I’ve banged my head against after reading his weasel words.
Cool Story Bro.
Tonight on Man Boobz: Brandon, unable to stomach the idea that he might not be as articulate as he thinks he is, boasts about beating up entire platoons of women fighters.
Aren’t you guys just adorable
Nah, what’s adorable is you writing Marty Stu fanfic about yourself on manboobz.
Oh, FFS, Brandon, if we all told you how impressed we were, would you stop trying to get the last word and let this thread die a natural death?
You are very manly, have large muscles, and I have no doubt you can beat up every female body builder in the world. Simultaneously, while tied up and fighting the effects of the Hong Kong Cocktail. Will that do?
@kristinmh:
1) Not really.
2) No
I need more details on the fanfiction. Also, he needs to post a picture, like TAB, to convince us of his utter rightness.
Crap. Well, sorry, folks, I tried.
Actually, a movie of the event would do.