False assumptions about women in combat roles

Hello internet! Recently one of my Facebook friends and fellow soldiers shared an article by the Operator As Fuck Nation which sought to deconstruct efforts to integrate women into combat arms using common sense and logic. That is a noble goal, and one that I would in many ways support, but unfortunately a careful reading finds that most of his assertions are based on faulty assumptions. The article is pretty short and definitely bears reading. I'll only be reproducing excerpts below, but you can find the full article by clicking here.

In the interests of full disclosure I will remind you that I myself currently serve as an infantryman, completely steeped in the hard charging swinging dick philosophy that goes with the title.

OAF was apparently prompted to write the editorial by a study conducted by the Marine Corps which takes an experimental unit that is comprised of 25% women and analyzes their combat effectiveness, with the stated goal of finding the "magic number" of women to men that maximizes readiness.

 I want to first address the issue of this “magic number”.  We know men are fit for combat right?  There’s no “magic number” for the amount of men needed for a combat effective unit.  I know that I can form a unit comprised of 100% men and it has the potential to be combat effective.  So if women really are fit for combat, shouldn’t I be able to make a unit composed of 100% women and have the potential for combat effectiveness?  If I’m trying to find a golden ratio of women in a unit before it’s no longer combat effective, aren’t I admitting from the start that having women in a unit will degrade its combat effectiveness?

The assumption here is that since they are looking for a "magic number" that is less than 100% it means that any combination whatsoever necessarily degrades readiness and therefore should not be considered. By this logic, only pure iron should be used for all weapons from here on out. Steel will no longer be considered because if you add too much carbon to the iron it becomes brittle and ineffective. This must mean that carbon degrades the alloys' readiness and should be purged.

We don't need any of your bullshit around here, carbon!

There are many reasons why it could be true that the ideal percentage of women may be greater than 0 but less than 100%. It may be logistics, cohesion, potential mating opportunities, or any number of other factors. Perhaps they could do the research and find that wouldn't ya know it, a 100% male unit actually the way to go! Still, it is not logical to categorically state that because 100% isn't ideal then no other combination should be considered.

Next up we have the standard argument, that being physical capability.

It’s hard to explain to the uninitiated the physical rigors of combat, so I’ll use sports as a parallel.  We separate genders in sports because we know that men are naturally bigger, stronger, and faster than women.  Sure, there are rare occasions when women find their way onto men’s sports teams at the high school, and even more rarely, at the collegiate level.

The implied assumption is that because men on average are more physically fit women should not be considered. Once again, this assumption is false. We have physical standards in the military because we acknowledge that not all men are up to the task of performing in combat.

Pictured: The height of combat readiness

While it may be true that men are, on average, fitter than women this does not preclude the possibility that certain driven and gifted women can not also make the cut. This is why the various branches have been mulling a gender neutral standard of performance for combat arms positions that would eliminate any man OR woman who cannot physically perform, eliminating this as a concern. It would be valid to say that because men are on average more likely to pass such a test then we would expect the pool of qualified applicants to be biased towards males, but that statement does not preclude the possibility of certain females in the mix.

Men in combat live like animals.  They spend months on end with no showers, no toilets, no electricity. Every day they wake up to the reality of kill or be killed.

In other words, their menstruation attracts bears.

This may possibly be the most valid of his assertions because it centers on something that is pretty much beyond dispute: Women have more sanitation needs than men do and sanitation can be on short supply in the field. If you doubt that I can only say that the stench of an infantryman who has recently emerged from the field is something akin to a ten day old hobo who has recognized the insulating properties of rotting animal carcasses.

Unfortunately, once again he takes a true statement and draws an invalid conclusion. While it may be true that having women in combat units puts logistical strain on a unit it is not necessarily true that this implies it should be avoided. The cost/benefit analysis is yet to be determined. I suspect they will find that the benefit of having more guns shooting freedom towards the enemy will outweigh the ursine attracting potential of periods.

Finally, he concludes with the Band of Brothers argument.

This intense hardship forges bonds of brotherhood that can’t be explained and can’t be replicated.  At times, the relationships these men have with their brothers in arms are quite literally the only thing they have to drive them forward. So what happens to these men who are living at the basest levels of human existence and instinct, when you insert a woman into the fold?  What happens to those bonds of brotherhood?   Is it realistic to expect them to live and die by their animal instincts, but completely turn off the most powerful instinct that human beings possess?  When all the men in a unit are sex deprived they can turn that aggression and frustration towards more productive things like killing. 

For the sex part, the military simply needs to realize that their soldiers do in fact like to mash their genitalia from time to time. As long as soldiers use protection and can keep such genital mashing outside of their immediate area things will probably turn out okay. We already have rules again rubbing sexy parts against people too close to you in terms of operational capacity.

For the other part, I think it unlikely that the "bonds of brotherhood" cannot possibly be formed with women who go through the same trials. Stories abound of women who have been thrust into combat roles who performed admirably and were respected by their peers. Men and women are more alike than we are different and any group is bound more tightly together when going through shared adversity.

He does allude to the protective instinct many men feel towards women, which is a valid point. Once again, however, that does not necessarily mean that the barrier is insurmountable. The entire training regimen has been designed to train out certain selective instincts in men under specific circumstances. For example, humans tend to have a pretty big aversion to face murdering their fellow humans. In fact, we have a word for those who don't share that particular value.

That word is fucking sexy.

Yet our soldiers are able to engage the enemy effectively when ordered to do so by a superior. They are also able to return to the civilian populace and do not engage in murdering any more than their civilian counterparts. Our training reduces the block against killing under specific circumstances without affecting it in general. For more on this topic I recommend "On Killing" by LTC Grossman. Very good book.

It stands to reason that we can likely design training that can remove the protectiveness instinct without damaging the psyche as a whole. Of course, that may not be true, which would then make this a valid argument against incorporating women. Until we try, however, we will not know.

All this is not to say that we should jump in with both feet. I love a good sandwich as much as the next guy, but there are definitely issues that have to be addressed before we can integrate combat arms. These issues run from logistics and physical standards to cohesion and instinct. I have every confidence that these obstacles can be dealt with if we acknowledge them and come up with sound strategies to adapt and overcome. I also have complete confidence that the Army will fuck it up in the most spectacular sense possible.

Addressing Creationists' response to Bill Nye

Bill Nye is a busy guy. He is, after all, the science guy. He recently took a break from sciencing and engaged in a debate on Creationism vs. Evolution.

Afterwards, the scholars at the journal known as "Buzzfeed" posted a stinging retort. Picture after picture showed the chinks in science's armor; the cracks that showed the truth behind their lies! Finally, after so long, we could finally put this issue to rest, thanks to Buzzfeed!

Sarcasm not included.

I actually used to be a hard-lined Creationist. As in six-days-rested-on-the-seventh-cause-the-Book-said-so Creationist. Eventually I made the transition to Theistic Evolutionist, and finally to a full fledged born again believer in Science and, by extension, Science's one true prophet, the Science Guy. I feel it is my sacred duty to refute these arguments (or, if that fails, to violently convert others to my point of view). It will be difficult to combat such wordsmiths. It may even be impossible. But, I have to try.

So here goes (all of these images are from Buzzfeed. I've reproduced them here so you don't have to go back and forth. Please click on the link above. Since I generate approximately two dozen readers a year, I'm hoping it won't be a problem):

#1: 

Oh, you clever beast you. Straight to the politics, I see? Fortunately, I have seen through your trap, genius though it is. I have the answer:

Yes.

Great. Now, lets get to the evidence supported claims!

#2:

Or not. That's okay, we're just getting warmed up here.

No, I am not afraid of a Divine Creator, anymore than I am afraid of Sauron. I do not believe either exist, and therefore feel no fear about them. Their actual existence is immaterial to my level of anxiety about them.

Awesome, now, on to the evidence!

#3:

This one is technically impossible to disprove (which is why I subscribed to it for so long). The expanded argument goes that the universe was created with the appearance of age, not age itself. So the young universe would appear, to any observer, to be old.

Of course, that begs the question: If the universe looks old, feels old, acts old, and in every meaningful way that can be measured appears to be old...Doesn't that probably mean it just is old, instead of the result of a clever ruse on behalf of a particularly shy deity?

Even if it didn't, one of the core scientific pursuits is to develop useful models to predict the behavior of the universe and to uncover the laws that run it. The model of apparent age has no advantages over absolute age, and adds another level of complexity that is unnecessary, and therefore should be discarded.

To put another way, it could also be true that the entire universe consisted entirely of tapioca pudding five minutes ago, and we were only just now created with all the appearances of age (memory, children, crippling student debt, etc). I choose not to believe this.

#4:

No.

Oh, that was actually the whole question? Okay then. I mean, I used to say this too, before I took Physics. Maybe you just missed that one. The second law of thermodynamics is popularly known as the "Law of Entropy".

The full implications are much more deep than I can claim to understand, but the basic gist is that entropy is a thing that can be measured which tells us how "ordered" a system is (this relates to law #1, which says that heat is a form of energy). The level of entropy in an isolated system will not spontaneously decrease, meaning that increases in order must be at least matched by decreases in order elsewhere.

Creationists often love to point this one out because it seems to turn the very weapons of science against them. "AHA!" they shout, a smug smile on their stupid bearded face, "The Second Law of your own sciencey stuff says that order can't increase! Going from a single cell organism to a fat, sweaty human is definitely an increase in order, so nana nana boo boo you lose." Unfortunately, they always neglect on extremely important detail: This law applies to isolated systems. If a system is not isolated, entropy can indeed go down, provided that some other system compensates. For example, if everyone on Earth suddenly decided to clean their rooms for once in their damned lives, entropy may decrease. This entropy can be offset from all kinds of places. Like, for instance, that huge fusion reactor that burns in the sky for half of each day. It supplies energy to our planet, which allows for plants to grow and decrease their entropy. At the same time, it generates a metric fuckton of entropy to compensate.

The overall entropy of the universe will indeed continue to increase until everything is extremely messy and disorganized. That will be a very bad day, but fortunately we don't have to worry about that for trillions of years. Until then, there are plenty of nooks & crannies for the universe to hide some entropy.

#5:

First: How do you explain the soulless look in your eyes? Second, I'm going to be generous and assume that your usage of the word "their" was actually a cleverly disguised cry for help, meant to signal that the man with the gun won't let your family go until we answer your question.

So, Soulless Suzy, the answer is that the Earth is a sphere. As it rotates on its axis you can see different parts of the universe from its surface. The sunset (and, incidentally, the sunrise) occurs when the curvature of the earth hides the sun from view. This is no more mysterious than seeing the top part of a ship first.

If you mean the color show you get during these celestial events, then the explanation is we happen to live in an awesome universe. Our atmosphere is made up of millions of gas particles, as well as all kinds of other stuff that gets in the air, such as dust and water. When the sun is more or less straight above you the light from it doesn't have to go through much of the atmosphere. When it is coming at you from the horizon, though, it has to go through more and more atmosphere to get to you. If you imagine the atmosphere as a clipboard, coming from the top down it only has a little bit of thickness. From the side, it's got the whole length of the clipboard.

As the light struggles valiantly through all the shit we throw up in the air it is knocked aside, around, and all over the place. As it scatters, the wavelengths that get through change depending on many different factors. Since the wavelengths of light are what we perceive as colors we get an awesome light show, because of physics.

Isn't science neat? Let's continue.

#6:

This is pretty summed up in #4, though I must admit I'm somewhat surprised to see a smartphone ask this question. You have the internet, smartphone, you should know better.

What do these people think scientists would do if they found out that the second law actually debunked evolution? Cover their ears and go "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU STUPID ENTROPY!"? Hell no, they'd publish that shit and proceed to swim in pools of grant money, only coming up for air to be lotioned by grad students vying for a piece of the research.

#7:

I have to admit, I had not heard of this one before. Doing some quick research on the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, reveals it is the study of how intellect influences the world around us and the "divine intelligence". I couldn't find any evidence they had published, but  I would humbly submit that for this to be applicable to the conversation it would have to not only prove that it is a real effect, but that said effect was caused directly by a Creator and not simply a heretofore unknown law of the physical universe.

So, call me later when you can do that, I guess?

#8:

Here we touch on the philosophical aspect of religion, which is truly where it shines. It does indeed give a clear direction and sense of purpose to many, which is no doubt to their benefit. I assume, by the underlining of the word "objective", that said meaning would have to come from an outside source (i.e. "God") in order to qualify. I suppose in that sense, I have no objective meaning in life.

I used to. I don't miss it. Nowadays the meaning in my life is derived from my own wants and desires. The desire for my children to be better off than I was. For the pursuit of a somewhat more comfortable life. For the fight to leave the world a bit more equitable and enlightened than when I arrived. That's meaning enough for me.

#9:

Yup.

See, the universe has been around for a really, REALLY long time. On a long enough time scale, ANY event, no matter how improbable, will happen. This is simply a result of how chance works. If you flip a coin long enough, you'll end up getting heads 50 times in a row. It's extremely unlikely, so unlikely in fact that you'd have to flip a coin once a second for 2.8 billion years for it to happen (number of seconds in a year divided by .5^50). A long time, sure, but eventually it'll happen. Fortunately, those little proteins trying to make that first life form weren't working alone. If we had the entire human race flipping those coins, getting a 50 time streak would only take half a year! We'd all probably have some killer thumb muscles by that point.

Bottom line: Anything is possible if you do it enough times.

#10:

Awesome! Good for you. I suppose you've got some reasoned arguments or evidence to back up that belief?

No?

Moving on.

#11:

What? Who the hell have you been talking to? That doesn't even make sense. Did you leave your TV on the History Channel 2 all day? You did, didn't you?

If aliens did intelligently design us, they did a super shitty job. How about that appendix there, aliens? What the hell is up with putting an organ in me that is literally a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode shit all over my insides? Real bang up job.

#12:

Actually, we've found all kinds of different hominids. Neanderthals, Homo whatever (tons of those), various great apes, etc., etc. Example after example of in between steps. Researchers actually have done a lot of work to figure out how much of your DNA comes from Neanderthals, and the answer is surprisingly a lot more than zero. Apparently out ancestors were all into some sweet, sweet Neanderthal love. I guess murdering them got old and we just decided to sex them into oblivion.

#13:

We don't know yet. We do have some interesting theories. For example, having different stages of maturity allows the young and old members of a species to not compete as much for resources, allowing the species to diversify its food sources and conferring an advantage to survival. This is certainly an enigma, but one of the awesome things about science is there's always something we don't know yet. That doesn't mean we abandon all hope, though. We just have to keep looking.

#14:

The fault here lies with the premise. Evolution is a theory. Creationism is not, not in the scientific sense.

In the academic vernacular, theory means something different than it does to laypeople. For them, an idea starts as a hypothesis. It is tested, and tested, and tested again. It has to make predictions which can be verified and shown to be true. If it does this really well then it gets to be called a theory. Only when it has been vetted to an extraordinary degree can it be called a law. Even when that happens, there's always the chance that some new understanding of it will come along and upset what we thought we knew. Creationism, on the other hand, makes no independently verifiable predictions and produces no replicable results.

We teach evolution as fact because it's the theory that has the greatest amount of evidence at the moment. Of course, we also teach some things as "fact" we know aren't true. Newtonian physics, for instance, are not always true. If we get really big and fast (relativity) or really small (quantum physics), it breaks down. They serve well enough for those of us who aren't venturing into the frontiers of human experience, however, and so we teach it as true because it approximates the truth to a highly reliable degree in almost all situations one is likely to encounter.

#15:

I think you misspoke there. A scientific theory IS, by definition, testable, observable, and repeatable. That's why we're going with evolution on this one. That theory will make predictions that we can verify. For example, when it comes to DNA, one would expect there to be a lot of garbage sitting around, left over from previous species. If there is a common ancestor, one would expect there to be common DNA between ourselves and less complex organisms. One does find both those things. It doesn't make sense that an intelligent designer capable of creating the entire universe would leave a bunch of useless junk laying about. So, this prediction by intelligent design falls flat.

We aren't taking this evolution thing on faith, dear. If this worries you, remember that relativity started on a blackboard. When it was first conceived we didn't have any way to directly observe its effects. The fact that someone is probably looking at your picture using a smartphone is proof that it works. We eventually found ways to test it and it held true.

#16:

Our molecular structure is made out of certain proteins, arranged in a certain way, that convey "information". Arrange those proteins in a different way and you get different information. Sometimes this change is good. Sometimes its bad. Kind of like language: You've got a certain collection of letters that you can combine different ways. You don't need new letters for new information, just to put the old letters in new configurations. Sometimes it's good, like "facetious". Sometimes it's bad, like "YOLO".

#17:

In the strictly biological sense, I'm here to pass on my genetic material to my offspring in order to further the species, and to help said offspring reach their mating time so that my material can keep going. For a less bleak answer, see #8.

Basically, sex. Lots of sex is the reason.

#18:

What is this, amateur hour? See #12.

#19:

Yes, though I've heard rumors that the big bang theory is losing some popularity among people way, WAY smarter than me. I trust those people to make predictions based on the theory, test those predictions, and alter the theories accordingly. I guess you could say I do have faith, in a way; I have faith that scientists will continue to push the boundaries of knowledge.

The difference is my faith has made satellites that beam the entire collection of human knowledge to a handheld device that I use to look at kittens and naked humans.

#20:

It totally is, isn't it! Man, the universe is SO AWESOME! The way that momentum conserves so that turning a spinning wheel in your hand makes your chair spin? Mind blowing! The way that gravitational pull makes things eventually slow down and become tidally locked, so that we always look at the same part of the moon? The laws of physics are really, really neat. No debate there. I just think that the wonder of the universe should be chalked up to that.

Of course, the obvious rebuttal is that "God wrote those laws". In which case, why fight the study of them so much? If God truly did write those laws, shouldn't we study them as ardently as possible and get close to Him through the study of his handiwork? If you want to know Mozart, do you not listen to his music?

#21:

Probably the same place God came from.

(Also, it wasn't a star. Those came later.)

#22:

Probably the same reason you came from your parents but you didn't summarily execute them the moment you left the womb.

Although that would make child birthing a lot more exciting.