Originally posted by bustr
Hangtime,
Times have changed a bit. I'm from your generation and have similare reactions. The instinctive response to keep women and children from harms way is basic survival of the species. Allowing women to be slaughtered on the battel feild in the numbers we once did would mean species suicide. The human species can be rebuilt from a disaster as long as you have a handfull of males and large pool of females. We forget in these modern times that the source of our survival is our females.
War untill recently was a very physically violent affair. Now with technology ones mind and ability to use it in concert with the technology becomes the primary divider of the chaff from the wheat. Yes with technologies help in our new age style of warfare women are equal to men.
God forbid if we have another global war that decends back into the all consuming physical brutalality and casulties of previous centuries. Wars like that border on species survival and only a fool would suggest placing the species source of survival in harms way.
War is not some Politically Correct game of gender equality. We should really have warning bells going off in the animal part of our brains shouting at us that something is wrong in sending our femals off to die. When the war is over, who's left to make children? Seems like a dumb species survival strategy to me.
I hear yah Bustr.. I have a daughter, 21 years old, and my ex-wife.. both demand 'equality' and from what I've seen regarding how tenacious they are when confronted with adversity, how brutally viscious they can be when their views are challenged I have no doubts that they should receve equal consideration with regards to fair treatment in the workplace and the body politic.
My brain know this.. yet I still move to open a door for 'em, and if anybody ever even looked like a threat to either of 'em (or any other woman in my view) I'd probably react with boneheaded 'caveman' hindbrain action. This 'gorilla' attitude has earned me my fair shir of bruised shins.. no matter; it's built in; was installed at childhood, and is not a function I'll ever easily or comfortably forstall.
It's 'social conditioning', drilled in our old heads by the social dynamics of the times we were reared in. Times have changed.. my grandkids will likely not have the knee-jerk reaction to close proximity females I came up with.. I know my kid does not simper and shy away from the stuff that made young girls squeal and cry when I was young. The Social landscape has changed.. somewhat.
Do I agree with it all.. women in combat, serving on ships, driving trucks into ambush zones? nah, not really. But I know I'm an antique.. and the facts say they can do it if trained for it.. just like the facts show I'm against it because i was trained differently.
Pilots have a saying "You Fight like you Train." Combat arms commanders have moved along from the R.Lee Ermy sterotype, today they deal with diffrent realities than I can grasp.. it ain't my Army anymore... the new kids in the field have tools I don't recognize, troops trained differently than I was trained and fight actions we never considered 'military' in scope when I served.
So.. I sit back and consider how I'd react to having a woman in my Squad and shudder... Todays squad leader just see's another body. I see a liability, the new leaders see just another troop... or they're censured and booted for non-conformity to current policy.
Tis the way of the world.. times change, the old folks shake their heads and rue some of it from the comfort of our rockers..
"dammit woman, where's my teeth?"
