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United States24604 Posts
In most of the countries TL members are from, women have achieved equal (or nearly equal) rights to men. For example, they can apply for the same jobs; men also can hold jobs that historically were considered women's jobs without as much scrutiny. There is still talk about a glass ceiling, and there are still jobs where men greatly outnumber women (or vice versa), but we have come a long way from the days men had one socially acceptable role and women had another.
The issue I have been thinking about is how to handle applications from females for jobs that have difficult physical requirements. On average, women are physically weaker than men in certain ways (and probably stronger in others). Of course, there are women who are much stronger than the average man as well. My initial position was that women should be allowed to do the same jobs as men as long as they can meet the same physical standards (and men who can't meet those standards can't have the job either).
I think the most typical example given of this is a firefighter who needs to carry X kilograms of gear when entering a burning building. When candidates are training to become firefighters they need to be able to demonstrate whether or not they are fit/strong enough to carry that gear and do the job. Whether that person is a women or a man should not matter. If long hair is incompatible with the equipment, then men and women firefighters both need to have shorter hair.
However, I think there are those who feel such a seemingly fair policy is unfair to women. It's 'easier' for a man to have short hair than for a woman. Perhaps we should make some modifications to the equipment women wear to make it safer for them to have longer hair. In fact, not every firefighter needs to carry the same exact equipment... maybe we could have the male and/or stronger firefighters carry the heavier gear, and the weaker firefighters carry the lighter gear. If this is the case we can afford to lower the physical entrance standards for women slightly. This makes the job more inclusive instead of having 20 male firefighters for every 1 female firefighter, without necessarily endangering anyone so long as there are still enough people meeting the original, more rigorous physical requirements. Note that the last two paragraphs are just an example, and that I do not know the details about being a firefighter.
To me, the latter argument sounds a bit ridiculous. However, take a look, for example, at the physical requirements to be in the US Military (putting aside any irrelevant/tangential thoughts you may have about the military):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Physical_Fitness_Test#Standards
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PuwbbSL.png)
Just look at the 2 mile run standards (the situps apparently are the same although pushups are not): a 22 year old male needs to run it three minutes faster than a female... that is a pretty significant difference. The physical requirement for entering and staying in the military are lower for women than for men.
Look at how a 21 year old male's standards compare to a 32 year old's standards: 15:54 VS 17:42. The difference isn't as big as between 22 year old males and females, but it's still there. Why are the standards lower for older people?
The obvious answer is that older people generally are weaker than younger people. If you are in top shape at 20 years old, you will perform better at most of these fitness tests than at 40 even if you keep up with your training. The human body physically peaks, and then it's all downhill from there (although you can still be in 'very good' shape until you are much older if you work at it).
Basically, getting weaker is out of your control as you get older. Then again, being born male or female is also out of your control. Would it be right to say that females need to do the two mile run in the same time as men, but that 30 year olds can take more time than 20 year olds?
One argument I can see is this: as you get older (at least in the military) your job will shift from being a more physical one to a more spoken/written leadership role. The decreasing physical abilities and standards for aging employees is not problematic, as long as the person is still decently fit. However, women do not typically enter as supervisors any more than men do, so they need to be just as fit as the newbie men.
The problem I have with this is that the lowered standards are not only for people who have moved up in rank. If you try to enter the military at 30, you will be starting at the same rank/rate/etc as a 22 year old entering at the same time. Your lowered entry standards can't really be justified by saying that you don't need to be as strong.
For what it's worth, I looked into it an found out that officers in training get their heads shaved if they are men, and get their hair trimmed to their shoulders or chin if they are women. I also found out that certain jobs (such as working on a submarine) are much more available to men than women (although the US is starting to work on integrating females), a vice versa (it's harder for men to get the jobs that women go into since they can't go into subs).
Since giving this more thought I'm not as confident in my original position that we should just always have equal physical standards for men and women. On the other hand, I don't fully side with the way the US military handles gender either. I feel like this a tricky nuanced issue that is made out by many to sound simpler than it is.
 
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Being honest with ourselves, women and men won't perform equally in all areas because of evolutionary differences. Therefore there shouldn't be an expected equality in the jobs they can perform. This leads to more men doing some jobs and more women doing other jobs.
I do not think this is a bad thing, just a reasonable and logical thing.
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women are naturally better looking and more affable than men so get a huge advantage in many job roles. you see women dominating all highstreet stores, all supermarkets, all office jobs, hotel jobs, reception, office, admin and secretary jobs and many catering roles (restaurants/cafes). you dont see women cleaning caravans as much because they dont need to do that
where i work, there are ~10 men who do the "labour" jobs such as cleaning caravans, litter picking, and ~10 women who do the "sitting down" jobs such as reception, office, admin. do men have any sort of advantage over the women here, get paid as much, have breaks (we dont get breaks), have an easier job or time doing their job, or have any option of switching to a different role if they want to?
just another perspective
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Honestly, I don't understand any of the reasoning for the army having different physical requirements based on age and/or gender. If you need to have a certain level of fitness, that should be the same minimum for everyone. Period. I can understand if say the physical requirements are then higher to join the rangers etc. If you have a minimum, it should be the minimum for a good reason and apply to everyone.
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United States5162 Posts
It's definitely a tricky issue with no ideal situation.
It's an inherit unfairness in life that we're not all born exactly equal. Some are more apt to be strong, smart, athletic, ect, and the gender difference is a major component of those aspects. I'm not sure it's possible to overcome that unfairness without creating additional unfairness, as I see only a few way to handle this.
We can lower standards for women while giving them the same opportunities as men. This seems just as unfair to men, who would be more qualified for the more physical positions, while also creating a potential issue where women aren't physically able to do what is needed.
We can lower standards for women and only give them positions where physicality isn't as important. This still has a lot of the same discrimination, except instead of being completely excluded, women are only excluded from certain positions.
Or don't lower standards. The small amount of women able to compete with men can do it, while the rest are excluded mostly due to biology.
Personally, I think gender should be irreverent and you ability to do the job should be most important. So positions that are very physical should have high requirements, and probably exclude most women. It's a shame we all don't have equal opportunities based almost solely on our biology, but I don't see how we can rectify that without putting people in positions based essentially on affirmative action, and lowering the effectiveness of said positions.
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On September 15 2013 00:30 micronesia wrote:
Perhaps we should make some modifications to the equipment women wear to make it safer for them to have longer hair. In fact, not every firefighter needs to carry the same exact equipment... maybe we could have the male and/or stronger firefighters carry the heavier gear, and the weaker firefighters carry the lighter gear. If this is the case we can afford to lower the physical entrance standards for women slightly. This makes the job more inclusive instead of having 20 male firefighters for every 1 female firefighter, without necessarily endangering anyone so long as there are still enough people meeting the original, more rigorous physical requirements. Note that the last two paragraphs are just an example, and that I do not know the details about being a firefighter.
Is it really worth it for an employer to change a job to make it more inclusive to both genders?
In principle the hiring decision is based on the expected performance versus the cost of hiring someone. The gender bias comes into play when an applicant's expected performance is misjudged due to cultural preconceptions. Therefore, I think that the area for change is in the evaluation of job applicants, rather than the job itself.
Also firefighter is a weird example because in some areas it's more like a volunteer position while in others it's a dangerous necessity. The job requirements can differ greatly for residential vs rural firefighters (for example forest fires require specially-designed equipment; if someone can't use it they should really reconsider their career path).
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If the physical standards are necessary and there for a good reason (threatens peoples lives if not met), then I don't see any justification for altering them to adjust gender ratio. If the standards are arbitrary and don't apply to the job then get rid of them instead of playing this game of adjustment. It defeats the purpose of having a standard if you're going to bend it to meet different classes of people.
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I agree with you. It's not as clear cut as people want it to be.
I think you hit on a lot of subtleties that cause making changes to be difficult. Even if you are in a position of power to alter these policies and have the time to think about it, gender fairness is such a political topic that you will almost definitely come under fire no matter what you do, and these subtleties are not likely to get the attention they should from sensationalist media/water-cooler gossip. I think a lot of people in this position are going to feel like it is easier to just keep things the way they are, and only tackle the topic when they are put under pressure by mass opinion to (aka letting women into the military at all).
One poster above mentions that it's more common to see women in secretarial jobs. He offers the reason that they are more affable and beautiful or something like that, but I think it's a society thing. Of course we've seen cute girls at these jobs, but we also see a lot of very ordinary women too. Boys when they're young are encouraged to do these physical, laborious jobs, girls are often taught the exact opposite, to try to keep their hands clean and not over exert themselves. There are counter examples but there aren't many, and we see that reflected in this.
I think we often mistake what we're used to for what is 'biological' or 'evolutionary' fact. You might be able to find a study that shows people are more receptive to a female voice on the phone than a man's, but you might just be really unused to hearing a male secretary.
It's a slow process and it isn't speeding up any time soon. Big populations take a long time to make big changes in culture and attitude. We as individuals can only do our best to be ahead of that glacial curve ;p
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I think these double standards are kind of weird and i think they're even kind of insulting. Yes it's true, women are naturally physically weaker than men, but why would that be a reason to lower their requirements? Because it's not just like every man is as gifted as every other man. Someone who is 1.70m tall is probably going to have a harder time meeting the running requirements than someone who is 1.85 meters tall.
Is that a reason to set different standards for small and large men? Of course not, we just accept that the one has to work a little harder than the other and everything's fine. If you're not accidentally Albert Einstein or Usain Bolt, chances are high that there are many people in your field of work that are more gifted than you are, but i don't know anybody who would want other people to expect less of him/her because of it.
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Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Below 1.60m but want to work for the police? Tough luck.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Have a lower education than someone else (even though you might be part of a group where your employer has to reach a certain minimum quota)? Tough luck.
Adjusting standards to make the possibilities in a certain job "more equal" is a road that doesn't lead anywhere useful. It's obviously a different story if you realize that your general standards need an adjustment.
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On September 15 2013 03:18 r.Evo wrote:
Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Below 1.60m but want to work for the police? Tough luck.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Have a lower education than someone else (even though you might be part of a group where your employer has to reach a certain minimum quota)? Tough luck.
Adjusting standards to make the possibilities in a certain job "more equal" is a road that doesn't lead anywhere useful. It's obviously a different story if you realize that your general standards need an adjustment.
i think that it makes sense to have "different standards" if you think about these things not in terms of having an arbitrary speed that a candidate must be able to run (which generally, for most jobs, doesn't make sense- although it does for something like firefighting, which I think the op lists as having this as a sort of "hard requirement" that skews the ratio of men:women for that sort of career) but rather as wanting their eligible candidates to be within a subset of people that are a certain percentage above the normal in terms of general fitness, which is being measured by 2 mile times and push-ups.
if you think about it as something like, "we want people in the top X% of fitness" or "we want people that are X% more fit than the average person" rather than thinking of it as an arbitrary speed requirement, it makes sense.
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Men produce more testosteron, they grow more muscle, and they grow it faster. Men are the better athletes. End of discussion.
Anyway, i think women in the western world really dont have anything to complain about, pisses me off when women play the gender card, while at the same time crying for equality.
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On September 15 2013 03:18 r.Evo wrote:
Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Lol.
I have yet to see a physical fitness test standard that is remotely challenging.
Actually, in that respect, does anyone know of any jobs that have decently challenging aerobic minimums and what those are?
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The double standards are wrong. At least in military.
The purpose of a soldier is to perform on the battlefield. Regardless of circumstances, the enemy won't have any regard to the fairness of standards in your country; if a soldier is too slow or too weak, he will expose himself and be a burden to his squad.
Some jobs just can't promote modern definition of equality. Imagine guy getting 3rd place in a running competition, but being awarded with gold medal because he was the fastest compared to the expected standards for his age. That would be absurd.
Other areas probably can apply double standards to a certain degree, because they require more complicated set of skills and some people can compensate one deficiency with something else. But when it's needed, pure physical ability cannot be compensated with anything else. As someone said above, if people can't meet those requirements, then tough luck.
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As far as the differing standards go, in the military case I'm going to echo many here and say that I wouldn't want to trust my life to someone who (for reasons of sex or age) is not at the physical or mental standard necessary. Ditto for firefighters and policemen. But anything other than that, like an administrative or commanding job in the military, and it is just unnecessary limiting of everybody's options. And just having one standard for an application to the military, which houses a variety of possible jobs, doesn't seem to make sense, unless the standard is really only for an application to a foot-soldier role/private.
Practically speaking, no business can be "compassionate" or PC all the time for every case. There's simply not enough administrative or ethics expertise around. This is inherently a slow process. So if there's any physical requirement, I'd be inclined to not punish any business for imposing one standard (E.G., the military). Instead, movements toward a more rational system would be rewarded -- perhaps in terms of funding.
So the military should scrap the age and gender standard differences and put in a flat requirement for all categories, for now.
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With regards to the lowering standards over time, it's because of where you are assumed to be in your military career at that time.
Let's face it, are you going to throw out a senior master sergeant or brigadier general because they can't run as fast as they could 25 years ago? Career military people also tend to wind up getting a little bit more removed from the physical demands as their tasks shift more towards management. Until recently, women were not allowed to be placed into combat directly (by the US, at least) - they literally didn't have the same physical requirements in their positions. (Pissed my ex-wife off to no end that they wouldn't deploy her and that she had no chance of trying to join the PJs, Combat Controllers, or even TACPs.)
With that said (about age-based changes), my ex-wife's first sergeant was a E-9 with almost 30 years in the service. A lot of it was in special forces, and he chain smoked. He routinely destroyed everyone else in physical competitions, and said that he would quit smoking the day anyone in the squadron (a special tactics squadron, of whom even the non-combat, non-deploying personnel were in excellent shape) beat him on a run.
The military has a lot of different jobs, not all of them are directly in the front line. Of those that are, there are still different requirements based on function. Not every soldier/airman/marine/sailor is going to be able to pick up and hip fire an M-60. It's just nature. And no matter how strong you are, or how fast you run, you can't outrun a well aimed shot or an A-10 strafing run. The maximums in place in the military regulations are a little iffy too - almost a quarter of the above mentioned STS squadron were technically "obese" by military standards. Even though their body fat was probably around 8%, and they could easily throw me a long way.
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On September 15 2013 04:36 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 03:18 r.Evo wrote:
Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Lol. I have yet to see a physical fitness test standard that is remotely challenging. Actually, in that respect, does anyone know of any jobs that have decently challenging aerobic minimums and what those are?
I have no idea how the military works. Do you have to take a test before they'll even let you into bootcamp? "You are not even worth trying to make better." I would think bootcamp would be enough to bring almost anyone up to speed.
Would you say that anyone (without very irregular body type) who does weight lifting and training for a year would be able to pass such tests? Women can build muscles too, it just isn't very fashionable. It would make sense to me that is one large factor limiting them from reaching the very attainable minimums set for males. Surely they don't just want you to barely pass the test, they want you to exceed it. Men feeling more pressured to get involved with physically intensive sports (and the types of men who want to be firefighters probably being the same as those who like sports) are probably going to have a head start in that regard. But if you take a random female soccer/football player and put her on some weight training, do you think she will pass the male test easy peasy?
Women who want to 'stay in shape' are almost exclusively encouraged to focus on aerobics and lift tiny weights to build endurance rather than power... Testosterone might help men build muscles faster, but there's cultural factors telling women they basically shouldn't build muscle at all. Only 'tone.'
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The reason for the difference is that since the army isn't able to draft and really relies on recruits + lifetime soldiers, they pretty much have to let people in. Honestly, that is the biggest thing, the military complex enjoys its size, so it keeps it by the means necessary to do so.
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I see it like this.
If you want job A you must meet requirements XYZ
Gender ignored. Thats equality.
Would u like to be rescued by a firefighter which has minimum requirement of 10 (male) or minimum requirement of 8 (female).
If u phrase the question like that. Id bet 100% would choose 10 if they were ignorant of the gender behind the numbers.
Those 10 and 8 just example numbers ftr
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Whoa, this seems way too level-headed and thoughtful. It's almost weird to see a good discussion about gender without some crazy biased posting.
On September 15 2013 04:32 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:
Men produce more testosteron, they grow more muscle, and they grow it faster. Men are the better athletes. End of discussion.
Anyway, i think women in the western world really dont have anything to complain about, pisses me off when women play the gender card, while at the same time crying for equality.
Then I saw this.
There are a lot of women in "The western world". Not all of them are the same. You see, not all women are feminists and not all woman "play the gender card". An example of this would be like someone saying "Hey, 5 years ago, men liked Football, now they like My Little Pony." and you can see the problem with that statement; different groups of men in different contexts. It's very easy to oversimplify the situation you see in an incredibly obtuse manner, and then top it off with that gem 'women don't have anything to complain about', which is complete nonsense, especially since you're complaining about it. Do men have things to complain about whereas women don't?
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I would mostly agree with the people saying the standards should be equal, but it definitely depends on the exact role. As mentioned, in the case of a firefighter where physical capabilities are of the utmost importance, the standard should be the same regardless of gender. Sure you can try to suit the women with long hair differently, that doesn't really have anything to do with the standard of physical capabilities though. (unless, you know, the hair actually restricts necessary movement or something). + Show Spoiler +I'm all for the idea of having women who may not meet these requirements carry other gear and have other purposes in the squad if they aren't as demanding, as long as the members that actually do require the higher standards still hold the strict standard that is necessary to ensure a safe operation. So if either a man or a woman is in that lower position it is something they stay at until they are able to meet the higher standards to get their "promotion". I wouldn't want this lower ranked "weaker" firefighter just getting promoted because they're a nice guy/girl and end up not being able to carry their weight (literally and metaphorically) and costing someone their life. Completely fine to have different roles with different standards though, assuming it is still that same standard for men/women/old/young.
For things like military, I can see them being different because if they are desperate for recruits the standards may need to be lowered. However I still feel like that standard should still be the same whether it is a male or female, old or young. Same thing applies with the spoiler notes above.
Less important stuff can have different standards in cases unlike the above where human lives are in jeopardy. Sports & Recreational stuff, etc.
A bit situational, but most importantly I would hope that one standard is set for the life and death kind of stuff like firefighters as that is severely important to the operation.
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Some men are weaker (or have longer hair, whatever) than some women. Or even simpler, not all men are equally strong. Should jobs and standards be further adjusted to facilitate these people? In other words; in a perfect world, do we differentiate on basis of the reason of your flaws (rather than the flaw itself) and is gender the only thing according to which standards ought to be adjusted?
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On September 15 2013 16:49 Passion wrote:
Some men are weaker (or have longer hair, whatever) than some women. Or even simpler, not all men are equally strong. Should jobs and standards be further adjusted to facilitate these people? In other words; in a perfect world, do we differentiate on basis of the reason of your flaws (rather than the flaw itself) and is gender the only thing according to which standards ought to be adjusted?
A man who can't keep up with a certain standard shouldn't get the job just like a woman who can't keep up with a certain standard shouldn't get it. That's equality.
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On September 15 2013 16:57 r.Evo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 16:49 Passion wrote:
Some men are weaker (or have longer hair, whatever) than some women. Or even simpler, not all men are equally strong. Should jobs and standards be further adjusted to facilitate these people? In other words; in a perfect world, do we differentiate on basis of the reason of your flaws (rather than the flaw itself) and is gender the only thing according to which standards ought to be adjusted? A man who can't keep up with a certain standard shouldn't get the job just like a woman who can't keep up with a certain standard shouldn't get it. That's equality.
But should it be the same standard, that's the question, right?
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I have some military experience and I could chime in on this.
For the physical requirements, each year, we are required to take physical testing. As your chart shows, your results are matched according to your age and your gender. The reason is because they want military personnel to be within a very high percentile of physical fitness. If a male does not meet the minimum standards for his age group, but still meets the minimum requirements for older females, sure he can do better physical work than the older female, but there's no question that I would rather recruit someone who dedicates a lot of time and effort keeping themselves in tip top shape, even if they are an older female and not as strong as young male counterparts. Imagine if you are in a platoon. Every member of that platoon trains many hours a day keeping their physical fitness in top shape. However one younger male naturally meets the physical requirements and doesn't bother putting in a lot of effort. Would you ever feel comfortable going into combat with him by your side? It's a huge morale hit if individuals are vastly underperforming for their gender and age group, because that's what people naturally judge others by.
For hair standards, women with longer usually wear their hair in a bun like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
Hair and grooming standards are set for professionalism reasons. Female hair regulations fit all safety and performance requirements, but they are able to keep it longer because they are able to look sharp with long hair. Guys with long hair really doesn't look good in a military uniform. This is just for morale purposes again. It may not seem like a big deal logically, but there's something magical about seeing rows of properly stanced soldiers, uniforms sharp, and groomed perfectly.
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On September 15 2013 17:19 Chairman Ray wrote:
I have some military experience and I could chime in on this.
For the physical requirements, each year, we are required to take physical testing. As your chart shows, your results are matched according to your age and your gender. The reason is because they want military personnel to be within a very high percentile of physical fitness. If a male does not meet the minimum standards for his age group, but still meets the minimum requirements for older females, sure he can do better physical work than the older female, but there's no question that I would rather recruit someone who dedicates a lot of time and effort keeping themselves in tip top shape, even if they are an older female and not as strong as young male counterparts. Imagine if you are in a platoon. Every member of that platoon trains many hours a day keeping their physical fitness in top shape. However one younger male naturally meets the physical requirements and doesn't bother putting in a lot of effort. Would you ever feel comfortable going into combat with him by your side? It's a huge morale hit if individuals are vastly underperforming for their gender and age group, because that's what people naturally judge others by.
Only issue being that age and gender aren't the only two factors that matter here. At what point do we let in people in wheelchairs, just because they try hard?
On September 15 2013 17:19 Chairman Ray wrote:For hair standards, women with longer usually wear their hair in a bun like this: + Show Spoiler +Hair and grooming standards are set for professionalism reasons. Female hair regulations fit all safety and performance requirements, but they are able to keep it longer because they are able to look sharp with long hair. Guys with long hair really doesn't look good in a military uniform. This is just for morale purposes again. It may not seem like a big deal logically, but there's something magical about seeing rows of properly stanced soldiers, uniforms sharp, and groomed perfectly.
...this is too ridiculous for words. It's probably the way they think... but hell, how's this possible.
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Female hair regulations fit all safety and performance requirements, but they are able to keep it longer because they are able to look sharp with long hair. Guys with long hair really doesn't look good in a military uniform. This is just for morale purposes again. It may not seem like a big deal logically, but there's something magical about seeing rows of properly stanced soldiers, uniforms sharp, and groomed perfectly.
That's the same crap right there.
So long hair on women is fine because it "fits all safety and performance requirements" but long hair on men isn't because "it doesn't make them look sharp and is not good for morale"?
That's the exact same line of thought that would say "We should keep our platoons to just one color of skin because that's better for morale" - either long hair can be worn appropriately for the job and should be allowed for men and women or it should be deemed horrible for the job and shouldn't be allowed for either men or women. There is zero need to differentiate between genders for this type of thing.
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As somebody who was in the military I can tell you right now guys you're thinking about it wrongly as far as the military goes. The minimum requirements although they are different are for just entering basic training... what do you think we do for 3-4 months during basic... the minimum isn't something you aim for as you LEAVE the training so it's a non-issue that so many people in this thread keep bringing up. Nobody is losing their lives because women have to run a 4.5 while the guys have to do 6.0 on the third day of BMQ. My platoon had 7 people sent home on the third day (after the fitness test) and another 10~ moved to a fitness platoon because they were close to passing but still failed some aspect of the test.
Could we stop saying the difference in standards should make people in our military feel afraid of the people on the ground with them? It's complete bullshit from a bunch of people who have no clue what they are talking about. I became really good friends with quite a few girls / women who were going into the Infantry and Armored divisions and trust me when I say I never doubted they could keep up with myself or anybody else. It's insulting that you think the people in the army are THAT out of shape when they are deployed.
I don't really have an opinion outside of the military side of this discussion but I figured I'd chime in and mention that nobody ever complained about having to run for an extra minute or do 7 extra push ups during basic for the test. During every other PT class everybody did the exact same thing, no "discrimination". There is also a screening process for the MOC/Trade so yeah if you're like 5 feet tall and are skin and bones you'll do one of the other jobs the military has to offer.
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On September 15 2013 17:51 r.Evo wrote:Show nested quote +Female hair regulations fit all safety and performance requirements, but they are able to keep it longer because they are able to look sharp with long hair. Guys with long hair really doesn't look good in a military uniform. This is just for morale purposes again. It may not seem like a big deal logically, but there's something magical about seeing rows of properly stanced soldiers, uniforms sharp, and groomed perfectly. That's the same crap right there. So long hair on women is fine because it "fits all safety and performance requirements" but long hair on men isn't because "it doesn't make them look sharp and is not good for morale"? That's the exact same line of thought that would say "We should keep our platoons to just one color of skin because that's better for morale" - either long hair can be worn appropriately for the job and should be allowed for men and women or it should be deemed horrible for the job and shouldn't be allowed for either men or women. There is zero need to differentiate between genders for this type of thing.
It's unfortunate that human performance is severely affected by morale and mindset. That's why the military has all these very strict codes that do no practical purpose but promote morale and unity. Although skin color hasn't been an issue recently, another good example would be homosexuality, until the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy was revoked in 2011. Another one of the kinda extreme rules is that if you decide to cut your own hair instead of getting it cut by the licensed barber, you are technically able to get discharged under self mutilation. I haven't seen it ever happen though. These are two examples that I personally disagree with, and I'm happy that they revoked DADT, but I brought these up because they show how far the military actually goes to ensure morale is in tip top shape. Going into combat isn't a 9-5 job that people trudge through. Morale and mindset make every bit of difference. The cold truth is that without a lot of these 'morale' targeted codes, we wouldn't have a functional military at all, and so far there has been no alternative. It's unfortunate, but sometimes irrational rules have to be placed to cater to human irrationality.
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The cold truth is morale is a bullshit catch-all excuse for whatever stupid regulations they can't or won't justify.
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United States24604 Posts
I am going to respond to some of the posts in this thread.
On September 15 2013 01:59 FFGenerations wrote:
women are naturally better looking and more affable than men so get a huge advantage in many job roles. you see women dominating all highstreet stores, all supermarkets, all office jobs, hotel jobs, reception, office, admin and secretary jobs and many catering roles (restaurants/cafes). you dont see women cleaning caravans as much because they dont need to do that
where i work, there are ~10 men who do the "labour" jobs such as cleaning caravans, litter picking, and ~10 women who do the "sitting down" jobs such as reception, office, admin. do men have any sort of advantage over the women here, get paid as much, have breaks (we dont get breaks), have an easier job or time doing their job, or have any option of switching to a different role if they want to?
just another perspective
I definitely have seen examples where gender has been used to determine roles in the workplace, favoring males in some cases and females in others. We are far from done with this type of thinking in society. An example I have is how I worked for a couple of summers at a local town park. The males worked at maintenance (cleaning, mowing, etc) and the females worked at the gate (selling parking passes, etc). One guy said he wanted to work at the gate when he was starting and they didn't let him because he was a guy.
On September 15 2013 02:01 DusTerr wrote:
Honestly, I don't understand any of the reasoning for the army having different physical requirements based on age and/or gender. If you need to have a certain level of fitness, that should be the same minimum for everyone. Period. I can understand if say the physical requirements are then higher to join the rangers etc. If you have a minimum, it should be the minimum for a good reason and apply to everyone.
This was addressed both in the OP and in subsequent posts, but older people are generally not as fit as younger people. People who have been in their positions longer usually have lower needs for extreme fitness due to the more supervisory nature of their job. On the other hand, people entering as an entry-level participant at a later age might best be held to the same standards as the younger applicant.
On September 15 2013 02:12 Flakes wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 00:30 micronesia wrote:
Perhaps we should make some modifications to the equipment women wear to make it safer for them to have longer hair. In fact, not every firefighter needs to carry the same exact equipment... maybe we could have the male and/or stronger firefighters carry the heavier gear, and the weaker firefighters carry the lighter gear. If this is the case we can afford to lower the physical entrance standards for women slightly. This makes the job more inclusive instead of having 20 male firefighters for every 1 female firefighter, without necessarily endangering anyone so long as there are still enough people meeting the original, more rigorous physical requirements. Note that the last two paragraphs are just an example, and that I do not know the details about being a firefighter.
Is it really worth it for an employer to change a job to make it more inclusive to both genders? In principle the hiring decision is based on the expected performance versus the cost of hiring someone. The gender bias comes into play when an applicant's expected performance is misjudged due to cultural preconceptions. Therefore, I think that the area for change is in the evaluation of job applicants, rather than the job itself. Well the issue can't be looked at just from the perspective of what makes sense for a prospective employer... there are bigger issues.
Also firefighter is a weird example because in some areas it's more like a volunteer position while in others it's a dangerous necessity. The job requirements can differ greatly for residential vs rural firefighters (for example forest fires require specially-designed equipment; if someone can't use it they should really reconsider their career path).
I indicated that my use of firefighter was not meant to be an accurate reflection of how firefighters are actually utilized in all places, but simply an example to show why there would be physical standards and why they might need to be held the same for all applications regardless of gender or age.
On September 15 2013 02:56 Mothra wrote:
If the physical standards are necessary and there for a good reason (threatens peoples lives if not met), then I don't see any justification for altering them to adjust gender ratio. If the standards are arbitrary and don't apply to the job then get rid of them instead of playing this game of adjustment. It defeats the purpose of having a standard if you're going to bend it to meet different classes of people.
According to another poster in this thread, the physical standards (in the case of the military at least) serve other purposes besides measuring whether or not you are capable of doing the job. Different military jobs of course will require different physical fitness levels, but they don't put every type of person through basic training with a different level of rigor (there is some differentiation, but not a lot).
Despite that I understand the philosophy that you should figure out how fit applicants need to be, and then test them to see if they are at least that fit. Whether they are young or old, male or female, should not have much impact on whether they can do the job as long as they can meet the standards that were designed to test if they can do the job.
On September 15 2013 03:03 Chef wrote:
I agree with you. It's not as clear cut as people want it to be. Yeah, definitely the case. This thread has gone surprisingly well considering.
On September 15 2013 03:05 Nyxisto wrote:
I think these double standards are kind of weird and i think they're even kind of insulting. Yes it's true, women are naturally physically weaker than men, but why would that be a reason to lower their requirements? Because it's not just like every man is as gifted as every other man. Someone who is 1.70m tall is probably going to have a harder time meeting the running requirements than someone who is 1.85 meters tall. Actually I'm not so sure being taller would be an advantage there. The people I talk to who are shorter than me seem to find running easier haha.
Is that a reason to set different standards for small and large men? Of course not, we just accept that the one has to work a little harder than the other and everything's fine. If you're not accidentally Albert Einstein or Usain Bolt, chances are high that there are many people in your field of work that are more gifted than you are, but i don't know anybody who would want other people to expect less of him/her because of it.
Yeah I agree with the idea that some people will naturally need to work harder, and we can't accommodate every minor difference.
On September 15 2013 03:59 AiurZ wrote:
if you think about it as something like, "we want people in the top X% of fitness" or "we want people that are X% more fit than the average person" rather than thinking of it as an arbitrary speed requirement, it makes sense.
To play devil's advocate and use an extreme example, if an 80 year old man who is quite fit for his age (top 10%) and I (average, but still much fitter than the 80 year old) apply for a physical job, is it right to give him the job due to being so ahead of the curve (assuming he can safely do the job) for his age/gender, even though I would do the job much better? This kind of leads into an affirmative action discussion though, which I definitely don't want to transfer over to (even though there is relevance).
On September 15 2013 04:32 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:
Men produce more testosteron, they grow more muscle, and they grow it faster. Men are the better athletes. End of discussion. Do you not realize this is an oversimplification? Growing more muscle faster doesn't necessarily mean that men are better athletes in all regards. I mean generally, yes it's true, but there really isn't need for an 'end of discussion' comment. It just makes you look closed-minded, even if you have a valid point.
Anyway, i think women in the western world really dont have anything to complain about What qualifies you to make such a statement lol
pisses me off when women play the gender card, while at the same time crying for equality.
There are definitely some women who are hypocritical when it comes to this general topic. But... I think you have a lot of work to do if you want to reasonably make the case that 'women don't really have anything to complain about.' Women and men both have things to complain about, as do people who don't identify with either gender.
On September 15 2013 04:36 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 03:18 r.Evo wrote:
Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Lol. I have yet to see a physical fitness test standard that is remotely challenging. Actually, in that respect, does anyone know of any jobs that have decently challenging aerobic minimums and what those are?
Oh c'mon L_master you know there aren't any non-sports jobs that require the level of running that you personally consider rigorous! There are probably a few specialized military or government jobs with fairly high running standards, but nothing that a serious runner couldn't complete. I guess the hard part is being strong/smart AND a fast runner at the same time. Running doesn't promote physical strength as far as I can tell. The best runners (longer-distance) are just really lean.
On September 15 2013 04:47 wingpawn wrote:
The double standards are wrong. At least in military.
The purpose of a soldier is to perform on the battlefield. I think this is an oversimplification. Military personal do many things... only some groups actually enter battle.
Regardless of circumstances, the enemy won't have any regard to the fairness of standards in your country; if a soldier is too slow or too weak, he will expose himself and be a burden to his squad. Yeah I think the military has to be careful not to try to change themselves due to political pressure in a way that makes them less effective. On the other hand, I think a slow approach to change (which is what they are doing here) allows them to choose which types of progressive adaptations are and are not acceptable, based on careful research.
On September 15 2013 10:18 docvoc wrote:
The reason for the difference is that since the army isn't able to draft and really relies on recruits + lifetime soldiers, they pretty much have to let people in. Honestly, that is the biggest thing, the military complex enjoys its size, so it keeps it by the means necessary to do so.
A fair point... a lot of this may simply be out of necessity and doing the best they can in a situation with limited resources.
On September 15 2013 18:17 OmniEulogy wrote:
As somebody who was in the military I can tell you right now guys you're thinking about it wrongly as far as the military goes. The minimum requirements although they are different are for just entering basic training... what do you think we do for 3-4 months during basic... the minimum isn't something you aim for as you LEAVE the training so it's a non-issue that so many people in this thread keep bringing up. Aren't there exit requirements for training as well? You can repeat the discussion but using the requirements you need to meet to graduate from training, instead of the entrance standards. There is still variations according to age and gender.
Nobody is losing their lives because women have to run a 4.5 while the guys have to do 6.0 on the third day of BMQ. My platoon had 7 people sent home on the third day (after the fitness test) and another 10~ moved to a fitness platoon because they were close to passing but still failed some aspect of the test.
Could we stop saying the difference in standards should make people in our military feel afraid of the people on the ground with them? It's complete bullshit from a bunch of people who have no clue what they are talking about. I became really good friends with quite a few girls / women who were going into the Infantry and Armored divisions and trust me when I say I never doubted they could keep up with myself or anybody else. It's insulting that you think the people in the army are THAT out of shape when they are deployed. As I take it, this piggy backs on what was said earlier about how the fitness standards are not just used to ensure that soldiers are fit enough to do their job... there are other reasons for them and thus lower standards for certain groups of people does not mean they cannot do their job fully.
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If a woman applies for a job that men are statistically more likely to be good at, evaluate her credentials with no bias anyways. Do not assume the woman is worse but if she is worse, give the job to the other person.
I think science, and biology should be used. I'm not knowledgable in the least about physiology, but i do know that big strong leg muscles that are more likely to develop in men as a result of testosterone can help with running. He may perform on the running and lifting tests better, but maybe muscles are compensating for a weak lung capacity, heart functionality, and stuff known to help with physical performance like flexibility and red blood cell production. My point is, you might find a woman (or a man) who is smaller, but is actually a better physical worker due to flexibility and good cardio. Ideally this is all researched if someone is really looking for the best person for the job.
top shape, even if they are an older female and not as strong as young male counterparts. Imagine if you are in a platoon. Every member of that platoon trains many hours a day keeping their physical fitness in top shape. However one younger male naturally meets the physical requirements and doesn't bother putting in a lot of effort. Would you ever feel comfortable going into combat with him by your side?
Yes, give me gorilla man in my platoon please
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I don't think it's much of an issue in the US right now. Women have recovered from the recession much better than men. Manufacturing jobs are on the way out and health care is on the rise. There should always be some fields that are a bit unequal between genders.
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To play devil's advocate and use an extreme example, if an 80 year old man who is quite fit for his age (top 10%) and I (average, but still much fitter than the 80 year old) apply for a physical job, is it right to give him the job due to being so ahead of the curve (assuming he can safely do the job) for his age/gender, even though I would do the job much better? This kind of leads into an affirmative action discussion though, which I definitely don't want to transfer over to (even though there is relevance).
the problem, i feel, with trying to use extreme examples in this scenario is that these are obviously not the only physical characteristcs that they would be looking for (same as the example about "someone in a wheelchair who tries really hard"). there's probably going to be some other things that they are looking for (even if they aren't explicitly stated) and there's obviously a lower bound filtering out extremely fit 80 year old men/women.
my post more along the lines of thinking about the issue in a different direction: rather than thinking about things as having these arbitrary constraints ie having a specific mile time, being able to do a certain amount of push-ups that these are more of tests to filter out for a specific subset of the population, in this case looking to filter out for a subset of people that are X% more fit than normal.
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On September 15 2013 15:06 ninazerg wrote:Whoa, this seems way too level-headed and thoughtful. It's almost weird to see a good discussion about gender without some crazy biased posting. Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 04:32 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:
Men produce more testosteron, they grow more muscle, and they grow it faster. Men are the better athletes. End of discussion.
Anyway, i think women in the western world really dont have anything to complain about, pisses me off when women play the gender card, while at the same time crying for equality. Then I saw this. There are a lot of women in "The western world". Not all of them are the same. You see, not all women are feminists and not all woman "play the gender card". An example of this would be like someone saying "Hey, 5 years ago, men liked Football, now they like My Little Pony." and you can see the problem with that statement; different groups of men in different contexts. It's very easy to oversimplify the situation you see in an incredibly obtuse manner, and then top it off with that gem 'women don't have anything to complain about', which is complete nonsense, especially since you're complaining about it. Do men have things to complain about whereas women don't?
Im not speaking about all women. But there are women who complain about equality, while being hypocritical, and that pisses me off.
Maybe my opinion is biased, maybe i had bad experiences with women, so yea...
Compared to other regions of the world women really do have very little to complain in the western world, atleast here in belgium, i do not know the situation in other countries that well. Here they have all the freedom and rights as men do. Yet there are still women who just bitch about everything, and how bad everything is, how women have no chances in society, and usually its just because they still think they are 16 years old and want to rebel against the system, because thats just how this decadent society is, people dont realise how good their lifes actually are, they always need something to complain about, instead of looking at what they have.
I have seen alot of the world, traveled around in the balkan and europe alot, and even south-east asia, people in general just complain about little things that really dont matter, its almost a insult to people living in 3rd world countries. So yea, say what you want about my opinion, but discussing why women are allowed worse times on their miles because they are women, and whether or not this is gender discrimination, seems a little silly if you know the situation going on in other countries, but thats a first world country for you.
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@supplyblockedtv - theres some men who do that too. I might be one of them. I think that is ingratitude caused by not having suffered through true loss to know that one has what one needs to be happy, which is shelter, and loving companions of any sort and the freedom to make choices and all that.
I just wanted to change my mind about this thing. I disagree with the whole "let's go by who deserves this job "objectively"" notion completely.
I think the question really is, "can desire to perform be of greater value than having credentials to make one perform?" and I think the answer is YES. If someone wants something more then they deserve it sometimes. For instance i would like a service job but i know that many people are more likable, and presentable and personable than i am but if i am willing to try my best in all circumstances I think that's enough. That's the world i'd rather live in, where people don't get advantages arbitrarily. I guess that's idealistic....................There may always be disease, and accidents and bad luck. !!!!
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Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives.
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As soon as humans developed tools, physical prowess between genders as far as military prowess is diminishing.
Prioritize women piloting the entire drone fleet. Lord knows we have a hard enough time getting recruits for that!
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Just to add to something I always thought stupid and obviously unreasonable is the fact that in US military there are training requirements, a man has to be able to throw a grenade X amount of feet and a woman had to be able to throw it a lesser amount. I think there were a number of other lesser requirements for women as well which honestly doesn't make sense to me. If the goal is to have the best and most capable soldiers why are they allowing weaker people to fight up front? It's a disservice to our military and to themselves as well (they could be injured/killed more easily etc)
PS- I actually have a friendgirl that is completely against women in the military.
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United States24604 Posts
On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives.
Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all.
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On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all.
1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man.
2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue.
2. Women create competition amongst men in the group.
3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers.
4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men.
Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways.
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United States24604 Posts
On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel.
Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then?
2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men.
2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy?
3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations.
4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military.
Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it?
I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue.
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On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Show nested quote +Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? Show nested quote +2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. Show nested quote +4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Show nested quote +Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue.
I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are.
Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it.
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United States24604 Posts
On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat.
Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it.
I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person.
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On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Show nested quote +Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person.
You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies.
As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore.
Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift.
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On September 16 2013 03:00 AiurZ wrote:Show nested quote +To play devil's advocate and use an extreme example, if an 80 year old man who is quite fit for his age (top 10%) and I (average, but still much fitter than the 80 year old) apply for a physical job, is it right to give him the job due to being so ahead of the curve (assuming he can safely do the job) for his age/gender, even though I would do the job much better? This kind of leads into an affirmative action discussion though, which I definitely don't want to transfer over to (even though there is relevance). the problem, i feel, with trying to use extreme examples in this scenario is that these are obviously not the only physical characteristcs that they would be looking for (same as the example about "someone in a wheelchair who tries really hard"). there's probably going to be some other things that they are looking for (even if they aren't explicitly stated) and there's obviously a lower bound filtering out extremely fit 80 year old men/women. my post more along the lines of thinking about the issue in a different direction: rather than thinking about things as having these arbitrary constraints ie having a specific mile time, being able to do a certain amount of push-ups that these are more of tests to filter out for a specific subset of the population, in this case looking to filter out for a subset of people that are X% more fit than normal.
The problem is that the tests do not filter out a subset of the population. They select for two subsets - the fittest men and fittest women, and the consequence of the cutoffs is that women qualify over more fit men. What needs explaining is what added value being female brings to the table, to compensate for their poorer physical performance.
The top X% argument explains very little, because it doesn't look at the top X% of the population as a whole, but the top X% of men and women separately. If you start playing around with reference groups like this, why stop at men and women? You can have different standards for, say, people who are two standard deviations shorter than the average, or various ethnicities or people with multiple sclerosis.
What cannot be ignored, though, is that literally the purpose of different requirements is to have some women qualify ahead of physically more capable men. Do note that the top X% argument has never enticed professional sports teams to field women over men.
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The United States military doesn't actually do anything useful, so they might as well have it meet diversity standards. And I think it's really problematic to say that, for instance, rape in the military should be solved by segregating/eliminating women in the military. Maybe just eliminate men, if they can't control themselves, in most military scenarios women will still perform equally so it's not that big of a loss. (everyone can shoot a gun, pilot a vehicle etc.)
Also, the physical requirements work both ways. Men are heavier and it's more difficult to carry them. And if they were really that worried about strength, they would put everyone on steroid regimes, but as far as I know they don't.
For the firefighters example, presumably it helps to have some smaller, stocky people around for certain jobs. And if it was a given that diversity would be a feature of the workplace, then roles and equipment could be developed to give women higher functionality. I would dare to say that in most cases it will work out just fine.
And men aren't better at physical sports than women, it's just that the most popular sports all favor men. Women are more flexible and such. Presumably one of the reasons that gymnastics is always ridiculed is that it favors women, so it becomes part of dumb gender wars.
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On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift.
I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that?
Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now.
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On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now.
Also claims "most" military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+... and where is the evidence for this claim exactly? If I had to think of all my old friends in the infantry... I dont think most of them can bench 225... most are on the skinny side from all the cardio training. Squatting 300 or benching 225 (lolbench) doesnt have too much transfer to being able to ruck long distances.
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Yeah those numbers are bullshit. There is a reason that the military emphasizes body weight standards and cardio capacity above all else, and it doesn't have a thing to do with squatting 300 lbs.
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On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift.
haha what the fuck? most men in the military can't squat 300+ and bench 225+. most units don't even do strength training, but rather bodyweight/cardio type stuff.
i think before deciding whether females can be integrated into combat roles the military should come up with a better pt test that actually evaluates how well a person can do in combat. the pt test right now is so fucking stupid. pushups, situps and a run. the only thing you get out of doing pushups is being able to do more pushups. same with situps. and when the fuck are you going to run 2 miles in combat? if you're running 2 miles in combat you're probably in an escape and evade situation and you're fucked anyways. there's a reason the sof community has adopted different pt programs (THOR3 for sf and RAW for rangers, i'm not familiar with other branches sof pt programs). a real test that actually means something should be made before standards are.
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On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now.
Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.html
I can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes.
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On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes.
300lbs squat is not that much actually. I got there after 3 months of lifting with rippetoe`s routine (although my body weight is close to 100kg). But yea, i already did two years of fencing, so that might have helped with leg strength. My brother has been lifting for 2 years, and he can squat 180kg (natural). Reason why you probably saw less then 10 people squat that amount is because they are obviously retard teenagers who have everday upperbody day, and just want big biceps and a 6-pack. (damn, those people piss me off in the gym)
but yea, guys in the military dont do much strength training.
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On September 18 2013 00:38 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes. 300lbs squat is not that much actually. I got there after 3 months of lifting (although my body weight is close to 100kg). But yea, i already did two years of fencing, so that might have helped with leg strength. My brother has been lifting for 2 years, and he can squat 180kg (natural). Reason why you probably saw less then 10 people squat that amount is because they are obviously retard teenagers who have everday upperbody day, and just want big biceps and a 6-pack.
I post this fairly often on this site, but it would do you well to read up on availability heuristics and why they often make for false qualifiers. I've been involved in fitness training for going on 5 years, and though I'm fairly confident that my experience is enough to say that a 300 lbs squat is a fairly advanced lift, all I need to do is look at exrx.com's strength standards, which has already been conveniently linked. (exrx.com is hands down the best PT resource on the web) You'll see that, up to 220 pounds, a 300 lbs squat is considered an intermediate lift, or one that requires regular training for a number of years.
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On September 18 2013 00:46 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2013 00:38 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:
[quote]
Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes. 300lbs squat is not that much actually. I got there after 3 months of lifting (although my body weight is close to 100kg). But yea, i already did two years of fencing, so that might have helped with leg strength. My brother has been lifting for 2 years, and he can squat 180kg (natural). Reason why you probably saw less then 10 people squat that amount is because they are obviously retard teenagers who have everday upperbody day, and just want big biceps and a 6-pack. I post this fairly often on this site, but it would do you well to read up on availability heuristics and why they often make for false qualifiers. I've been involved in fitness training for going on 5 years, and though I'm fairly confident that my experience is enough to say that a 300 lbs squat is a fairly advanced lift, all I need to do is look at exrx.com's strength standards, which has already been conveniently linked. (exrx.com is hands down the best PT resource on the web) You'll see that, up to 220 pounds, a 300 lbs squat is considered an intermediate lift, or one that requires regular training for a number of years.
Ok i get your point. I also do have friends who still struggle with 80kg after 2 years. I guess my bodyweight and my history of fencing and frequent running helped alot for me. But i also think many people at the gym just dont push it enough...but maybe thats also just me :D.
edit: also to add more to the discussion, today during a internship as paramedic i overheard two nurses speaking about a male and a female security agent passing by. When they get called in for aggresion they go with only two agents. In my honest opinion, a woman can have all the training in as many martial arts as she wants, but when a guy who is dubble her size and bodyweight starts getting aggressive, what can she do? call for assistence? The nurses had a valid point saying that it isnt a job for women (these nurses were two women btw).
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60 year old man has to run 2miles faster than a 18 year old female? GG
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I think it's simply due to they don't want to turn away female recruits as they need to make sure they have a certain level of female in the army so that they can put some in different departments if necessary?
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On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes.
Who said anything about exclusion? The military is huge, and is in constant need of new people.
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The listed standards are pretty pathetic if the goal is to have a physically superior fighting force. Given the lax standards, this is obviously not the goal, and as such the relative values are largely irrelevant. The standards are nothing more than a capture code on a website - an absolute baseline to make sure that, yes, you are a walking, talking human being.
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On September 18 2013 07:33 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 10:17 iamho wrote:
Women shouldn't be in the military at all. The only reason they are is because of pressure from civilian politicians who care more about political correctness and pushing the "women can do anything men do!" myth instead of actual military objectives. Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes. Who said anything about exclusion? The military is huge, and is in constant need of new people.
This thread is literally named physical standards for women. The function of physical standards is to exclude whomever fails to meet them. This really isn't hard.
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On September 18 2013 00:46 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2013 00:38 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:05 micronesia wrote:
[quote]
Why not? You really need to back up such a statement as women shouldn't be in the military at all. 1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes. 300lbs squat is not that much actually. I got there after 3 months of lifting (although my body weight is close to 100kg). But yea, i already did two years of fencing, so that might have helped with leg strength. My brother has been lifting for 2 years, and he can squat 180kg (natural). Reason why you probably saw less then 10 people squat that amount is because they are obviously retard teenagers who have everday upperbody day, and just want big biceps and a 6-pack. I post this fairly often on this site, but it would do you well to read up on availability heuristics and why they often make for false qualifiers. I've been involved in fitness training for going on 5 years, and though I'm fairly confident that my experience is enough to say that a 300 lbs squat is a fairly advanced lift, all I need to do is look at exrx.com's strength standards, which has already been conveniently linked. (exrx.com is hands down the best PT resource on the web) You'll see that, up to 220 pounds, a 300 lbs squat is considered an intermediate lift, or one that requires regular training for a number of years.
The problem with discussing squatting on the internet is that it is impossible to tell if someone knows what they are talking about unless you have seen them squat, or less preferably, seen their physical capital. Squatting is perhaps the most technical lift of the big three (deadlift, bench, squat) because it has flexibility requirements and movement patterns that have fallen into disuse for most modern people who sit in chairs all day. It is entirely possible that a large number of people in the military can "squat 300" but can't squat 300.
On September 16 2013 21:21 Grumbels wrote:
The United States military doesn't actually do anything useful, so they might as well have it meet diversity standards. And I think it's really problematic to say that, for instance, rape in the military should be solved by segregating/eliminating women in the military. Maybe just eliminate men, if they can't control themselves, in most military scenarios women will still perform equally so it's not that big of a loss. (everyone can shoot a gun, pilot a vehicle etc.)
Also, the physical requirements work both ways. Men are heavier and it's more difficult to carry them. And if they were really that worried about strength, they would put everyone on steroid regimes, but as far as I know they don't.
For the firefighters example, presumably it helps to have some smaller, stocky people around for certain jobs. And if it was a given that diversity would be a feature of the workplace, then roles and equipment could be developed to give women higher functionality. I would dare to say that in most cases it will work out just fine.
And men aren't better at physical sports than women, it's just that the most popular sports all favor men. Women are more flexible and such. Presumably one of the reasons that gymnastics is always ridiculed is that it favors women, so it becomes part of dumb gender wars.
Have you watched the Olympics at all? Do you know how significantly the performance between men and women varies in almost every single event, including the marksmanship events? An all-woman army against an all-male army, assuming equal military technologies, would get slaughtered in almost every type of commonly encountered combat that exists today.
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On September 18 2013 16:24 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2013 00:46 farvacola wrote:On September 18 2013 00:38 SupplyBlockedTV wrote:On September 17 2013 16:39 Darkwhite wrote:On September 17 2013 10:47 ninazerg wrote:On September 16 2013 12:04 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:54 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:51 iamho wrote:On September 16 2013 11:40 micronesia wrote:On September 16 2013 11:28 iamho wrote:
[quote]
1. Women do not have the physical strength, size, or endurance to serve in an combat units. Do you not realize that many military positions do not involve significant use of physical strength, size, and endurance? Take a look at a list of military designators for any branch of the military sometime. 'Combat units,' regardless of if women should serve in them or not, only make up one segment of military personnel. Don't give me that "not all women are weak stuff" either, only women in the fourth standard deviation of strength are comparable to an average man, let alone a combat-ready man. I'm not sure how you specifically came up with 'fourth standard deviation' but regardless, it isn't necessary for the majority of women to be capable of meeting whatever physical standards you are thinking of... it's only necessary for the women who are accepted into the military to do so. So what if only 5% of women are as 'strong' as you feel they need to be? Why couldn't that 5% join then? 2. Women cannot endure the stress of combat units either, whether physical (spinal issues) or mental. PMS is also a serious issue. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Women do have some problems that men don't have, and vice versa, but I haven't actually seen you present evidence that this is sufficient to keep women entirely out of the military, but not men. 2. Women create competition amongst men in the group. What does this even mean? The way you are talking we should bar women from applying for jobs and force them to stay home with the kids, cook, and clean. Would that make you happy? 3. Men will naturally act to protect female soldiers. Well if there is actual evidence to support this claim of yours then I'm sure military training is utilized to prevent this from becoming a problem. I want to emphasize again that the military is not just about boots on the ground in combat situations. 4. The DoD has created all sorts of "diversity" initiatives which makes it easier for underqualified women to serve alongside qualified men. I'm not familiar with the specifics but this definitely sounds like it could be a problem. However, it is not a reason for why women shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military. Of course, this whole thing wouldn't even be an issue if military standards were the same for both genders, because then there would be almost no women in the armed forces anyways. I don't think the standards for men are so hard in most military positions that there would be almost no women. Granted, there would be less. Is it really that hard for a motivated woman to run a mile and a half in 10:45, do some pushups and do some situps if they train at it? I think you really need to do some introspection and figure out why you have such a view on this issue. I have such a view because I live in the real world, not your politically-correct fantasy land. The basis of your argument rests on "not all women are like that!". No, but 999 in 1000 are. Source? I think you are underestimating the capabilities of women (who work out, not necessarily random women). Also, you are not addressing the fact that many military positions (not a small percentage) don't involve physical combat. Your implication that I'm a misogynist because I don't think women should serve in the military is really troubling, and it makes me sad that the so many of your generation have been brainwashed into such lies. Men and women are not equal. Deal with it. I have not claimed that men and women are equal. Some people definitely are brainwashed and go too far with trying to seek out gender equality in foolish ways. You have the wrong person. You're right, I was only referring to combat units and should've said so explicitly, my apologies. As for the 999 in 1000, it comes from a study I read that showed how little the distributions of strength in men and women overlapped, though I can't find the study anymore. Its worth noting though that most military men can squat 300+ lbs and bench 225+. That would take a woman at least a decade of training (naturally, no steroids), frankly I have never seen a woman lift those weights in my lift. I think Micronesia already pointed out that not all military positions require above-average physical strength. For example, let's say a woman wanted to fly an apache helicopter. What is your objection to that? Also, lol @ your statistics, i.e., "I read a study", and my dad can squat 300 lbs easily, and he's over 50, which tells me that you have no idea how much weight the average military person can manage. If this were some exercise forum, someone would have asked "Do you even lift?" by now. Full-squatting 300 lbs, i.e. below parallel, is quite a lot. In the gym I worked out for three years, I saw less than ten people ever squatted this much. For reference, see: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htmlI can't see any particular reason why women couldn't fly helicopters, though I have trouble understanding why fitter men should be excluded from the same positions on the basis of more stringent physical requirements. Either they are irrelevant and shouldn't apply at all, or they need apply to both sexes. 300lbs squat is not that much actually. I got there after 3 months of lifting (although my body weight is close to 100kg). But yea, i already did two years of fencing, so that might have helped with leg strength. My brother has been lifting for 2 years, and he can squat 180kg (natural). Reason why you probably saw less then 10 people squat that amount is because they are obviously retard teenagers who have everday upperbody day, and just want big biceps and a 6-pack. I post this fairly often on this site, but it would do you well to read up on availability heuristics and why they often make for false qualifiers. I've been involved in fitness training for going on 5 years, and though I'm fairly confident that my experience is enough to say that a 300 lbs squat is a fairly advanced lift, all I need to do is look at exrx.com's strength standards, which has already been conveniently linked. (exrx.com is hands down the best PT resource on the web) You'll see that, up to 220 pounds, a 300 lbs squat is considered an intermediate lift, or one that requires regular training for a number of years. The problem with discussing squatting on the internet is that it is impossible to tell if someone knows what they are talking about unless you have seen them squat, or less preferably, seen their physical capital. Squatting is perhaps the most technical lift of the big three (deadlift, bench, squat) because it has flexibility requirements and movement patterns that have fallen into disuse for most modern people who sit in chairs all day. It is entirely possible that a large number of people in the military can "squat 300" but can't squat 300. Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 21:21 Grumbels wrote:
The United States military doesn't actually do anything useful, so they might as well have it meet diversity standards. And I think it's really problematic to say that, for instance, rape in the military should be solved by segregating/eliminating women in the military. Maybe just eliminate men, if they can't control themselves, in most military scenarios women will still perform equally so it's not that big of a loss. (everyone can shoot a gun, pilot a vehicle etc.)
Also, the physical requirements work both ways. Men are heavier and it's more difficult to carry them. And if they were really that worried about strength, they would put everyone on steroid regimes, but as far as I know they don't.
For the firefighters example, presumably it helps to have some smaller, stocky people around for certain jobs. And if it was a given that diversity would be a feature of the workplace, then roles and equipment could be developed to give women higher functionality. I would dare to say that in most cases it will work out just fine.
And men aren't better at physical sports than women, it's just that the most popular sports all favor men. Women are more flexible and such. Presumably one of the reasons that gymnastics is always ridiculed is that it favors women, so it becomes part of dumb gender wars. Have you watched the Olympics at all? Do you know how significantly the performance between men and women varies in almost every single event, including the marksmanship events? An all-woman army against an all-male army, assuming equal military technologies, would get slaughtered in almost every type of commonly encountered combat that exists today.
And that is part of the reason why I no longer frequent the BB.com forums 
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I don't know, I mean I understand that men and women are born with obvious genetic differences, and I understand why the bar is lowered for women in manly professions. It gets to me sometimes in a way that these lower standards may not live up to par in a particular situation down the road. For example, if women are allowed 2-3 extra minutes to run a mile and then a year later they are on a mission and told to be at an evac-location in 4 minutes, you better hope she damn well can run as fast as a guy in order to get there. Or the firefighter thing... let's say you have to be able to drag 250 lbs across 20 ft, but for women they have to lift 125 lbs across 15 ft (this is not to scale, just an example), and then at some point she goes into a burning building and can't drag someone out that's 275 lbs because the person is too heavy. I mean, 1-3 minutes difference is HUGE in these types of situations, it's life or death for you or the other person.
I'm not saying women can't perform what men are generally more superior at doing, but part of me doesn't believe that certain jobs should have lower standards for women. If you wanna a police officer, in the military, a firefighter, or whatever, you need to live up to it because it's reality. Part of me believes that women only do these professions because they are tired of being told that they can't do the things that "only men can do" and they want to make a name for themselves, but from that I am only speaking from a handful of women I know, so I know that doesn't apply to a lot of other women.
At UPS - where I work - the women generally get better treatment than the men. They get office jobs or some other position where they can sit and not get their hands dirty from lifting, and they can even dress cute if they want. They easily become trainers, supervisors, management, office assistants, human resources, or do other things like small sort (where everything is 8 lbs or less), or sit in a control tower and push buttons all day while looking at cameras. I mean for crying out loud, women's bathrooms are next to all the offices while the men have to walk up the stairs to use one.
I know a guy who works in construction, and he said there was once a woman who bitched to the city because there was construction going on and signs that read "men at work" and she believed that women should have equality in that statement. She won, and so they changed those signs to "men and women at work" even though there were no women actually working. These types of women genuinely piss me off.
If you want to be a firefighter, sure, go for it, but instead of teaching you to drag the weight of kids across the floor, you need to be able to drag that 300 lb fat man. If you can't do it, then tough luck. It's not a raised bar, that's the reality of it sometimes and you need to be able to perform ALL the tasks.
Frankly I don't care what women do honestly. I still respect women for who they are and what they're capable of doing in many roles, but when it comes to certain job tasks in life I just feel the bar should not be lowered, and they should face the reality of what the profession is. If you can't do it the way it really is, then why are you even there.
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This whole thread can be summarized to:
1- There are people who believe that that positive discrimination is good to help women.
2- There are people who believe that people should be judged based purely on their competences rather than their sex.
3- There are people who believe that men are just better because fuck you that's why. They're dicks.
I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively.
If the physical standards are there for a practical reason and not meeting the criteria poses a real risk, then perhaps the same standards should be observed for everybody. If on the other hand the standards are not necessarily relevant and only exist to select people out of a pool, then perhaps it's ok to have different standards. And then, IMO there's nothing discriminatory about giving people jobs which are more suitable for them. For firefighters, perhaps it's better to have the people who are physically weaker near the truck, shooting water at the building while the stronger folks go inside and try to evac people who may need to be dragged out. (Just examples, I don't know how it works).
IMO it's important to think practically first. Don't do positive discrimination when it can be dangerous, but I'd assume that in a vast majority of the situations, there are are reasonable solutions.
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On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:
This whole thread can be summarized to:
1- There are people who believe that that positive discrimination is good to help women.
2- There are people who believe that people should be judged based purely on their competences rather than their sex.
3- There are people who believe that men are just better because fuck you that's why. They're dicks.
I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively.
If the physical standards are there for a practical reason and not meeting the criteria poses a real risk, then perhaps the same standards should be observed for everybody. If on the other hand the standards are not necessarily relevant and only exist to select people out of a pool, then perhaps it's ok to have different standards. And then, IMO there's nothing discriminatory about giving people jobs which are more suitable for them. For firefighters, perhaps it's better to have the people who are physically weaker near the truck, shooting water at the building while the stronger folks go inside and try to evac people who may need to be dragged out. (Just examples, I don't know how it works).
IMO it's important to think practically first. Don't do positive discrimination when it can be dangerous, but I'd assume that in a vast majority of the situations, there are are reasonable solutions.
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments.
Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength.
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On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively.
Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak.
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On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments.
I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda...
Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength.
Beside the point entirely.
On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak.
Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude.
In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs?
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On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Show nested quote +Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs?
So you're the bane of your existence?
Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions.
I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel.
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On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs?
If the people were as physically strong, there would be no need for an entirely separate standard. Whomever qualifies by the female standard is physically weaker than the men who finish directly below the male cutoff. You are trading in fitness, in a setting where it is considered important enough to disqualify men without further consideration if they don't meet the requirements, for nothing but womanhood - on the unsubstantiated guess that they are perhaps better suited.
Of course, they might just as well be poorer fits for the job, too, but that doesn't fit in your narrative. The why not argument is a complete non-sequitur - what needs answering is why the supposedly irrelevant quality of sex suddenly trumps poorer physical performance. Why not - because merit and performance matter while sexual characteristics do not. Because positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for whomever gets discriminated against, even if they are men.
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"It's 'easier' for a man to have short hair than for a woman" can never be given as an argument.
I can say it's easier to have sex for women than for man therefore I want some for free.
Where at the first half of 20th century woman's rights was the way to go, the whole emancipation has grown over our heads.
For example in today society physically hitting a woman, even if she is in your own family and behaves poorly, is very discouraged and even considered as criminal act.
While if a woman hits a man, she can alibistically argue that he was sexually abusing her.
There is no sexual abuse for a man, mainly because it rarely happends because of the imbalance of the sexes.
Women are more manipulative on the other hand, and it's becoming mainstream - lying, manipulation is somehow now accepted by mainstream society and it's almost everywhere from media, advertisements, politics to our daily jobs.
The modern human rights laws actually most only apply to man, beacuse that most of the qualities that they ban are known to grown up men, not women, not children.
I want to reduce amount of lying and manipulation in the world which is a woman's quality at core but is not regualted.
In my opinion it is the source of most agression, misery and world problems we try to solve in a different approach today.
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And off the deep end we go.......
Here's a tip LastWish; lying and manipulating are not the essence of womanhood, no matter how many women lie to you and manipulate you.
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On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? So you're the bane of your existence?
Very perceptive of you nina.
On September 19 2013 17:14 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? If the people were as physically strong, there would be no need for an entirely separate standard. Whomever qualifies by the female standard is physically weaker than the men who finish directly below the male cutoff. You are trading in fitness, in a setting where it is considered important enough to disqualify men without further consideration if they don't meet the requirements, for nothing but womanhood - on the unsubstantiated guess that they are perhaps better suited. Of course, they might just as well be poorer fits for the job, too, but that doesn't fit in your narrative. The why not argument is a complete non-sequitur - what needs answering is why the supposedly irrelevant quality of sex suddenly trumps poorer physical performance. Why not - because merit and performance matter while sexual characteristics do not. Because positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for whomever gets discriminated against, even if they are men.
People who do not make the cut by arbitrary physical standards may have other particularities which make them suitable for specific combat jobs though. You can fail the regular male physical test and still be better than some idiot who passed because you have other talents. That's one of the problems with standards which are set largely arbitrarily. This is especially true when presumably, not all combat jobs require the same general 'physique'.
Anyway I don't buy into the idea that positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for somebody else. Odds are, the person who gets discriminated against is otherwise advantaged in many ways. Like I said, being a white guy is playing life on easy mode. Just do better.
Also I recognize that certain people are trying to make this out to be a simple matter and it isn't. My very first post mentioned that it's important to strike a good, and somewhat fair balance. But it's never fair, so we can try to balance it out within reason.
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On September 19 2013 18:30 LastWish wrote:
"It's 'easier' for a man to have short hair than for a woman" can never be given as an argument.
I can say it's easier to have sex for women than for man therefore I want some for free.
Where at the first half of 20th century woman's rights was the way to go, the whole emancipation has grown over our heads.
For example in today society physically hitting a woman, even if she is in your own family and behaves poorly, is very discouraged and even considered as criminal act.
While if a woman hits a man, she can alibistically argue that he was sexually abusing her.
There is no sexual abuse for a man, mainly because it rarely happends because of the imbalance of the sexes.
Women are more manipulative on the other hand, and it's becoming mainstream - lying, manipulation is somehow now accepted by mainstream society and it's almost everywhere from media, advertisements, politics to our daily jobs.
The modern human rights laws actually most only apply to man, beacuse that most of the qualities that they ban are known to grown up men, not women, not children.
I want to reduce amount of lying and manipulation in the world which is a woman's quality at core but is not regualted.
In my opinion it is the source of most agression, misery and world problems we try to solve in a different approach today.
Gotta be a troll post.
OT: Does anyone one actually know people in the military or that are firefighters? The way this discussion is going, it seems like they don't.
I've got several friends in the military, and one that is a firefighter. They all agree that these "standards" are basically arbitrary numbers, that don't actually reflect the requirements of the job, one way or another. My female friend in the military is a doctor. Is she required to adhere to these (or similar) standards? Yes, because it is the military, and this is the kind of shit they do. It is a massive bureaucracy, with a patchwork of weird rules. She also has to be able to fire a rifle, because the US army thinks everyone should be able to shoot a gun in the army, even if they are a doctor. Are either of these things relevant to her day to day job? Hell no, she is doing her residency for OB/GYN.
My firefighter friend is a guy, and honestly as far as I know he has no female coworkers. I could be wrong on that. What I do know is that the male "requirements" aren't really relevant, either. They set you up to succeed, not to fail. They don't send a single person into a burning building to lift a dresser off some old woman and carry her out alone. Could a conceivable scenario occur in which the "standards" might be an issue? Sure, but they are by far the minority, and would only be relevant if something went terribly wrong.
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On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel.
This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
We do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair?
On September 19 2013 23:09 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? So you're the bane of your existence? Very perceptive of you nina. Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 17:14 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? If the people were as physically strong, there would be no need for an entirely separate standard. Whomever qualifies by the female standard is physically weaker than the men who finish directly below the male cutoff. You are trading in fitness, in a setting where it is considered important enough to disqualify men without further consideration if they don't meet the requirements, for nothing but womanhood - on the unsubstantiated guess that they are perhaps better suited. Of course, they might just as well be poorer fits for the job, too, but that doesn't fit in your narrative. The why not argument is a complete non-sequitur - what needs answering is why the supposedly irrelevant quality of sex suddenly trumps poorer physical performance. Why not - because merit and performance matter while sexual characteristics do not. Because positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for whomever gets discriminated against, even if they are men. People who do not make the cut by arbitrary physical standards may have other particularities which make them suitable for specific combat jobs though. You can fail the regular male physical test and still be better than some idiot who passed because you have other talents. That's one of the problems with standards which are set largely arbitrarily. This is especially true when presumably, not all combat jobs require the same general 'physique'. Anyway I don't buy into the idea that positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for somebody else. Odds are, the person who gets discriminated against is otherwise advantaged in many ways. Like I said, being a white guy is playing life on easy mode. Just do better. Also I recognize that certain people are trying to make this out to be a simple matter and it isn't. My very first post mentioned that it's important to strike a good, and somewhat fair balance. But it's never fair, so we can try to balance it out within reason.
Of course they may have other particularities. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man. There is nothing to buy about positive and negative discrimination being two sides of the same coin. If you favor women, you automatically disfavor men - there is literally no way around it.
It isn't simple, because it is a matter of striking a balance between different concerns which are difficult to weigh against each other, but being honest about what discrimination really is and who loses out when somebody skips ahead of the line is a great start.
Finally, there is no need for a good balance between not stealing and stealing everything. Not stealing is the obvious answer. Similarly, it is not at all obvious that the correct balance between equality and discrimination is a bit of discrimination to maybe compensate for the other injustices which may or may not exist. Maybe just leaving irrelevant characteristics such as sex and race out of it is the best solution.
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United States24604 Posts
On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
It is only affirmative action if the reduced standards exist in order to try to provide a benefit to the group that has the lower standards... this may not always be the case for why physical standards are lower for women, although I won't say it never is, either.
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On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Of course they may have other particularities. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man. There is nothing to buy about positive and negative discrimination being two sides of the same coin. If you favor women, you automatically disfavor men - there is literally no way around it.
It isn't simple, because it is a matter of striking a balance between different concerns which are difficult to weigh against each other, but being honest about what discrimination really is and who loses out when somebody skips ahead of the line is a great start.
Finally, there is no need for a good balance between not stealing and stealing everything. Not stealing is the obvious answer. Similarly, it is not at all obvious that the correct balance between equality and discrimination is a bit of discrimination to maybe compensate for the other injustices which may or may not exist. Maybe just leaving irrelevant characteristics such as sex and race out of it is the best solution.
IMO your main fault is that you assume that the standards set when women simply didn't postulate to make an arbitrary cutoff are necessarily relevant, and they're not. Now I'm not necessarily advocating for separate standards between men and women, not that I would disapprove if it was done correctly.
When doing this is not impractical, why not lower the overall physical standards (previously simply used to weed out men even though some of them were undoubtedly perfectly adequate for the job) and redirect the requirements.
Assuming that old standards are good even though they were put together by men for men in a society controlled by men is just absurd.
In some cases, I'm sure it's true that the the physical standards set for men are adequate and practical, but you have to prove that. You say that positive discrimination is negatively discriminatory against certain people, which is true. On the other hand, what discriminates more against women than arbitrary* physical requirements set for men? I emphasize on the word arbitrary here again because until somebody proves to me that the arbitrary standard have sound reasoning behind them (in given situations), my point stands.
You speak of 'theft' as if the standards were perfectly fair de facto, despite the fact that there could be an alternative which would be just as effective at selecting good personnel without such a steep physical strength cutoff. I think we steal those jobs from women, and they want them back. Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people.
By the way I'm not saying that arbitrary rules are always bad. They'll always be unfair - I'm sure some really good marksmen and people who would have been excellent soldiers were rejected under this arbitrary rule and it was unfair to them, men included. That's inevitable - certain pearls will fall through the cracks and it's just something we have to deal with. Selection processes have to be efficient and will always be flawed to an extent. But here I'm saying that if an arbitrary rule keeps out a vast majority of an entire classification of people, maybe this rule needs to be reviewed for efficacy. It especially needs to be reviewed if said rule was instituted when it was only for men, for instance.
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On September 20 2013 02:18 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Of course they may have other particularities. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man. There is nothing to buy about positive and negative discrimination being two sides of the same coin. If you favor women, you automatically disfavor men - there is literally no way around it.
It isn't simple, because it is a matter of striking a balance between different concerns which are difficult to weigh against each other, but being honest about what discrimination really is and who loses out when somebody skips ahead of the line is a great start.
Finally, there is no need for a good balance between not stealing and stealing everything. Not stealing is the obvious answer. Similarly, it is not at all obvious that the correct balance between equality and discrimination is a bit of discrimination to maybe compensate for the other injustices which may or may not exist. Maybe just leaving irrelevant characteristics such as sex and race out of it is the best solution. IMO your main fault is that you assume that the standards set when women simply didn't postulate to make an arbitrary cutoff are necessarily relevant, and they're not. Now I'm not necessarily advocating for separate standards between men and women, not that I would disapprove if it was done correctly. When doing this is not impractical, why not lower the overall physical standards (previously simply used to weed out men even though some of them were undoubtedly perfectly adequate for the job) and redirect the requirements. Assuming that old standards are good even though they were put together by men for men in a society controlled by men is just absurd. In some cases, I'm sure it's true that the the physical standards set for men are adequate and practical, but you have to prove that. You say that positive discrimination is negatively discriminatory against certain people, which is true. On the other hand, what discriminates more against women than arbitrary* physical requirements set for men? I emphasize on the word arbitrary here again because until somebody proves to me that the arbitrary standard have sound reasoning behind them (in given situations), my point stands. You speak of 'theft' as if the standards were perfectly fair de facto, despite the fact that there could be an alternative which would be just as effective at selecting good personnel without such a steep physical strength cutoff. I think we steal those jobs from women, and they want them back. Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people. By the way I'm not saying that arbitrary rules are always bad. They'll always be unfair - I'm sure some really good marksmen and people who would have been excellent soldiers were rejected under this arbitrary rule and it was unfair to them, men included. That's inevitable - certain pearls will fall through the cracks and it's just something we have to deal with. Selection processes have to be efficient and will always be flawed to an extent. But here I'm saying that if an arbitrary rule keeps out a vast majority of an entire classification of people, maybe this rule needs to be reviewed for efficacy. It especially needs to be reviewed if said rule was instituted when it was only for men, for instance.
You are not reading my posts. I have only spoken against different standards for men and women, which is what this topic is about.
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On September 20 2013 02:38 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 02:18 Djzapz wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Of course they may have other particularities. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man. There is nothing to buy about positive and negative discrimination being two sides of the same coin. If you favor women, you automatically disfavor men - there is literally no way around it.
It isn't simple, because it is a matter of striking a balance between different concerns which are difficult to weigh against each other, but being honest about what discrimination really is and who loses out when somebody skips ahead of the line is a great start.
Finally, there is no need for a good balance between not stealing and stealing everything. Not stealing is the obvious answer. Similarly, it is not at all obvious that the correct balance between equality and discrimination is a bit of discrimination to maybe compensate for the other injustices which may or may not exist. Maybe just leaving irrelevant characteristics such as sex and race out of it is the best solution. IMO your main fault is that you assume that the standards set when women simply didn't postulate to make an arbitrary cutoff are necessarily relevant, and they're not. Now I'm not necessarily advocating for separate standards between men and women, not that I would disapprove if it was done correctly. When doing this is not impractical, why not lower the overall physical standards (previously simply used to weed out men even though some of them were undoubtedly perfectly adequate for the job) and redirect the requirements. Assuming that old standards are good even though they were put together by men for men in a society controlled by men is just absurd. In some cases, I'm sure it's true that the the physical standards set for men are adequate and practical, but you have to prove that. You say that positive discrimination is negatively discriminatory against certain people, which is true. On the other hand, what discriminates more against women than arbitrary* physical requirements set for men? I emphasize on the word arbitrary here again because until somebody proves to me that the arbitrary standard have sound reasoning behind them (in given situations), my point stands. You speak of 'theft' as if the standards were perfectly fair de facto, despite the fact that there could be an alternative which would be just as effective at selecting good personnel without such a steep physical strength cutoff. I think we steal those jobs from women, and they want them back. Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people. By the way I'm not saying that arbitrary rules are always bad. They'll always be unfair - I'm sure some really good marksmen and people who would have been excellent soldiers were rejected under this arbitrary rule and it was unfair to them, men included. That's inevitable - certain pearls will fall through the cracks and it's just something we have to deal with. Selection processes have to be efficient and will always be flawed to an extent. But here I'm saying that if an arbitrary rule keeps out a vast majority of an entire classification of people, maybe this rule needs to be reviewed for efficacy. It especially needs to be reviewed if said rule was instituted when it was only for men, for instance. You are not reading my posts. I have only spoken against different standards for men and women, which is what this topic is about.
Very shallow response. My position is closely related to OP's topic. You can hardly argue that it's off topic, and even if it were, it's still really close. Not sure why you'd try to dismiss it so cheaply, it seems relevant to me.
Plus, I've spoken about different standards for men and women first. I just added something on top of that. Something which you shouldn't outright ignore.
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On September 20 2013 03:56 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 02:38 Darkwhite wrote:On September 20 2013 02:18 Djzapz wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:
Of course they may have other particularities. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man. There is nothing to buy about positive and negative discrimination being two sides of the same coin. If you favor women, you automatically disfavor men - there is literally no way around it.
It isn't simple, because it is a matter of striking a balance between different concerns which are difficult to weigh against each other, but being honest about what discrimination really is and who loses out when somebody skips ahead of the line is a great start.
Finally, there is no need for a good balance between not stealing and stealing everything. Not stealing is the obvious answer. Similarly, it is not at all obvious that the correct balance between equality and discrimination is a bit of discrimination to maybe compensate for the other injustices which may or may not exist. Maybe just leaving irrelevant characteristics such as sex and race out of it is the best solution. IMO your main fault is that you assume that the standards set when women simply didn't postulate to make an arbitrary cutoff are necessarily relevant, and they're not. Now I'm not necessarily advocating for separate standards between men and women, not that I would disapprove if it was done correctly. When doing this is not impractical, why not lower the overall physical standards (previously simply used to weed out men even though some of them were undoubtedly perfectly adequate for the job) and redirect the requirements. Assuming that old standards are good even though they were put together by men for men in a society controlled by men is just absurd. In some cases, I'm sure it's true that the the physical standards set for men are adequate and practical, but you have to prove that. You say that positive discrimination is negatively discriminatory against certain people, which is true. On the other hand, what discriminates more against women than arbitrary* physical requirements set for men? I emphasize on the word arbitrary here again because until somebody proves to me that the arbitrary standard have sound reasoning behind them (in given situations), my point stands. You speak of 'theft' as if the standards were perfectly fair de facto, despite the fact that there could be an alternative which would be just as effective at selecting good personnel without such a steep physical strength cutoff. I think we steal those jobs from women, and they want them back. Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people. By the way I'm not saying that arbitrary rules are always bad. They'll always be unfair - I'm sure some really good marksmen and people who would have been excellent soldiers were rejected under this arbitrary rule and it was unfair to them, men included. That's inevitable - certain pearls will fall through the cracks and it's just something we have to deal with. Selection processes have to be efficient and will always be flawed to an extent. But here I'm saying that if an arbitrary rule keeps out a vast majority of an entire classification of people, maybe this rule needs to be reviewed for efficacy. It especially needs to be reviewed if said rule was instituted when it was only for men, for instance. You are not reading my posts. I have only spoken against different standards for men and women, which is what this topic is about. Very shallow response. My position is closely related to OP's topic. You can hardly argue that it's off topic, and even if it were, it's still really close. Not sure why you'd try to dismiss it so cheaply, it seems relevant to me. Plus, I've spoken about different standards for men and women first. I just added something on top of that. Something which you shouldn't outright ignore.
There is hardly anything to reply to. Three quarters of your reply is a tangential regurgitation of feminist ideology.
I have never assumed the current standards are relevant. I am fine with removing them altogether or substantially lowering them or even raising them, depending on which particular institution we are talking about and what pool of applicants they have available. I would have to know a lot more about what sort of work people are going to do with what sort of equipment and how easily people generally adapt to the demands of their new positions, etcetera, to hold much of an informed opinion on this.
If it's true that the current standards are needlessly strict, and if it is true that because of this, the best qualified people are not being recruited, and if there is a good way to select these talented people from the pool of applicants, then of course it would be a good idea to change things around and hire the best people. All of these ifs, though, are questions which aren't readily answered, and none of them seem to call for different male and female standards. I don't have to prove anything about the current standards, because I have no opinion on the standards themselves, only that they ought to be unisex or a very explicit explanation given for why it's a good idea for a 14:00 run to disqualify a man and qualify a woman - preferably one which doesn't reference the patriarchy.
Physical requirements do indeed indirectly discriminate against women. This is not a problem in and of itself. However, hiring on the basis of irrelevant criteria is always a bad idea, because that's not how you find the most talented people. If you are trying to find a wet nurse, you will have to discriminate against men and that's perfectly fine. Your point about the current standards maybe being needlessly strict does indeed stand unchallenged, and is still irrelevant to my point about unisex standards.
I speak of theft not to discuss the current standards, simply to highlight that the call for balance between extremes is a fallacy. The correct solution isn't always in the middle ground - sometimes, it is to say that equality trumps racial or sexual diversity. It is still not at all obvious to me why a equality needs to give any way to female representation, or whatever else a laxer standard for females is supposed to achieve.
Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people.
I am not defending the old standards. People unlike me might be, though. I have no particular opinion.
Your final paragraph is simply disheartening. Insofar as possible, the selection process should be tailored to find the most suitable people without too much overhead. It is not any more okay if bad rules exclude capable slow running males than females.
In conclusion, your post ignores mostly everything I have written, assumes I hold opinions I have never expressed and spring boards directly into delivering your favorite lines of trite feminism. That is why I did not particularly want to reply in full. Nowhere does it explicitly deal with the question I have asked very explicitly, namely:
. I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man.
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On September 20 2013 05:25 Darkwhite wrote:
There is hardly anything to reply to. Three quarters of your reply is a tangential regurgitation of feminist ideology.
I'm largely unaware of feminist ideology so I couldn't possibly be regurgitating it. In a sense, I should be flattered that you're willing to label my post as "ideology" while you're dismissive and trying to diminish my posting before even trying to bring up relevant substance. I assure you however that my posting is genuinely my own reasoning.
I have never assumed the current standards are relevant. I am fine with removing them altogether or substantially lowering them or even raising them, depending on which particular institution we are talking about and what pool of applicants they have available. I would have to know a lot more about what sort of work people are going to do with what sort of equipment and how easily people generally adapt to the demands of their new positions, etcetera, to hold much of an informed opinion on this.
If it's true that the current standards are needlessly strict, and if it is true that because of this, the best qualified people are not being recruited, and if there is a good way to select these talented people from the pool of applicants, then of course it would be a good idea to change things around and hire the best people. All of these ifs, though, are questions which aren't readily answered, and none of them seem to call for different male and female standards. I don't have to prove anything about the current standards, because I have no opinion on the standards themselves, only that they ought to be unisex or a very explicit explanation given for why it's a good idea for a 14:00 run to disqualify a man and qualify a woman - preferably one which doesn't reference the patriarchy.
Physical requirements do indeed indirectly discriminate against women. This is not a problem in and of itself. However, hiring on the basis of irrelevant criteria is always a bad idea, because that's not how you find the most talented people. If you are trying to find a wet nurse, you will have to discriminate against men and that's perfectly fine.
Ok
Your point about the current standards maybe being needlessly strict does indeed stand unchallenged, and is still irrelevant to my point about unisex standards.
Although I was responding to you, not everything was directed to you, but more importantly I was just bringing up a path of solution that I could think of and perhaps not everybody did. Essentially part of my intervention simply acted as a good ole' "although I could be in favor of some wisely targeted positive discrimination, all of this mess could be avoided if we set standards more intelligently in some cases"
I speak of theft not to discuss the current standards, simply to highlight that the call for balance between extremes is a fallacy. The correct solution isn't always in the middle ground - sometimes, it is to say that equality trumps racial or sexual diversity. It is still not at all obvious to me why a equality needs to give any way to female representation, or whatever else a laxer standard for females is supposed to achieve.
Sure equality trumps all this shit but when the sand settles and it's still unequal, because the rules that are set are unequal, let's not assume that "adjusting" stuff is inegalitarian. You could argue that all things being equal, leave it be - but when the standards are set by us, then adjusting the standards to try to make them more equal is not inherently bad. Again, it would be preferable to set the standards more intelligently in the first place.
I am not defending the old standards. People unlike me might be, though. I have no particular opinion.
Your final paragraph is simply disheartening. Insofar as possible, the selection process should be tailored to find the most suitable people without too much overhead. It is not any more okay if bad rules exclude capable slow running males than females.
In conclusion, your post ignores mostly everything I have written, assumes I hold opinions I have never expressed and spring boards directly into delivering your favorite lines of trite feminism. That is why I did not particularly want to reply in full. Nowhere does it explicitly deal with the question I have asked very explicitly, namely:yaddayadda
Bad analysis. I'm almost completely unaware of any type of formal or informal feminist theory outside of Tumblr's big feminazi joke. And my post doesn't ignore what you've said, you assume that it does by simply tackling a tangent that I made, a tangent that you tried to dismiss, thus making you a hypocrite because you wrongly accuse me of shit you yourself are guilty of. I think "lazy" describes your behavior well, in this thread. Not to mention wrong about the whole feminist doctrine shot in the dark.
I need you to substantiate why a woman clocking in a 14:00 run is more likely to have such qualities than a man doing 13:30. Because the only function of different standards is to admit the slower woman ahead of the man.
Irrelevant. For one, I never said that a woman would be more likely to have qualities than a man under those settings, so you perhaps make assumptions about me (again, something you accused me of). More importantly, those settings are ill adapted to make a unisex judgment about who's "better" at what they'll have to do (presumably, the job is not about clocking smaller numbers). Since it's a cutoff, it's highly
You're not wrong for the most part, and I think we're both good people who are, at least to my sense, arguing for two marginally different types of settings which are fairly egalitarian. I just prefer my version because I'm more willing to break your bullshit canned rules. Lastly I want to reiterate that you're a hypocrite and you'll want to work on that.
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On September 15 2013 04:36 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On September 15 2013 03:18 r.Evo wrote:
Requirements should have exactly one standard: Whether the person meets the general requirement or not.
Can't run fast enough to be a police officer (because you're too old/too fat/physically disabled/your genes suck)? Tough luck.
Lol. I have yet to see a physical fitness test standard that is remotely challenging. Actually, in that respect, does anyone know of any jobs that have decently challenging aerobic minimums and what those are?
PJs
Seals
Recon marine
All have hard physical requirements once you're far up the pipeline. Not talking about the basic requirements -- talking about the cutoff marks for things like swims, rucks, etc., once you're several weeks/months into the process. It gets harder and harder and the attrition/drop out rate is incredibly high
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On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair?
So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia.
It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response.
When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions:
1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted.
2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs.
Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest.
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On September 19 2013 22:38 farvacola wrote:
And off the deep end we go.......
Here's a tip LastWish; lying and manipulating are not the essence of womanhood, no matter how many women lie to you and manipulate you.
First you need to see the truth, then you'll see all the lies.
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On September 20 2013 08:58 Djzapz wrote:
Let's review the history of posts here:
Your first post in this thread is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=429114¤tpage=4#64 , including these fine little snippets:
I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively.
If on the other hand the standards are not necessarily relevant and only exist to select people out of a pool, then perhaps it's ok to have different standards. And then, IMO there's nothing discriminatory about giving people jobs which are more suitable for them.
IMO it's important to think practically first. Don't do positive discrimination when it can be dangerous, but I'd assume that in a vast majority of the situations, there are are reasonable solutions.
There is literally no way to read this, other than as an argument in favor of some sorts of discrimination in some cases.
My direct reply is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19781288 , which mostly states that favoring one group will necessarily affect those left out negatively.
Your direct reply is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19782139 , which recognizes that men get the short end when women's standards are laxer. In its entirety:
Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude.
In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs?
This post includes the lovely line about why discrimination is okay as long as it compensates for male/white privilege, which is where feminist ideology enters the picture. The last paragraph, I interpreted as a defense for laxer female standards - if this is the wrong interpretation, then it's just a non-sequitur instead.
This in turn promts this post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19784530 , where I try to explain why I find separate standards problematic; because it calls for an explanation of why a man who fails to meet the male standard is expected to be less qualified than the female who fails to meet the same standard, but qualifies by the laxer female standard.
In your next post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19785506 , given as a direct reply, you write:
People who do not make the cut by arbitrary physical standards may have other particularities which make them suitable for specific combat jobs though. You can fail the regular male physical test and still be better than some idiot who passed because you have other talents.
Which I expected was meant to answer the question from my previous post and still relate to discrimination in particular, not just having a single, lower unisex standard. I can hardly see how this is an unfair interpretation. You also include this part:
Anyway I don't buy into the idea that positive discrimination is necessarily negative discrimination for somebody else. Odds are, the person who gets discriminated against is otherwise advantaged in many ways. Like I said, being a white guy is playing life on easy mode. Just do better.
Which supports the interpretation that you are indeed defending laxer female standards.
My next post, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19785967 , keeps focusing on different standards. Your follow up, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19786388 , goes off an absurd tangent, including claims like these:
In some cases, I'm sure it's true that the the physical standards set for men are adequate and practical, but you have to prove that.
Which I don't have to prove, because I have never claimed it.
Don't tell me there aren't perfectly competent women who were rejected because of some bullshit rules that were made up for men. In all likelyhood, it happens all the time because people like you are so keen on accepting the old standards as if they were perfect and designed with practicality in mind rather than to weed out people.
I have never told you anything like this. Weeding out people when recruiting is the whole point of selection. I have never supported the old standards, I have supported that whatever standards should be unisex unless a very explicit reason can be given otherwise.
My direct reply, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19786473 , bows out of the discussion because you are trying to make me defend assertions I have never made (see above), while at the same time subtly changing the topic from different female standards to all sorts of irrelevant nonsense, including much wider feminist assertions. This sort of bait and switch discussion technique does not interest me at all:
Assuming that old standards are good even though they were put together by men for men in a society controlled by men is just absurd.
On the other hand, what discriminates more against women than arbitrary* physical requirements set for men
It especially needs to be reviewed if said rule was instituted when it was only for men, for instance.
Your reply, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19786815 , insists that I reply to your post, even though you are at this point arguing about physical standards in general - which I have never discussed and no interest in discussing. You only reiterate that:
IMO your main fault is that you assume that the standards set when women simply didn't postulate to make an arbitrary cutoff are necessarily relevant, and they're not. Now I'm not necessarily advocating for separate standards between men and women, not that I would disapprove if it was done correctly.
That is, supporting different standards, tautologically, if it is done correctly, without even attempting what's the correct way of doing it and why it would be beneficial, which I have repeatedly asked you to explain.
Our last two posts, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19787237 and http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=19788299 , are derailed into the meta discussion, because you refuse to defend your original assertions about positive discrimination and insist on changing the topic.
I just prefer my version because I'm more willing to break your bullshit canned rules.
I have a single bullshit canned rule - discrimination, in the popular sense of favoring or disfavoring people on the basis of criteria irrelevant to filling the position, is a bad thing, while equality is a good baseline, and departing from it requires a lot sounder arguments than:
Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude.
Finally, let me state this as clearly as possible: I am only interested in discussing the pros and cons of different male and female standards.
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On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair? So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia. It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response. When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions: 1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted. 2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest.
It is my contention that asthmatic men have a different physical make-up than non-asthmatic men, and may require a different set of physical standards, perhaps the same as the female ones. As you must know, asthmatic men have poorer oxygen uptake on average than non-asthmatic men. The army isn't going to put 50lbs of equipment on the back of an asthmatic man or female or weak man, period. Just because the the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for asthmatics and non-asthmatics doesn't mean one group is going to get it easy when they get in.
Indeed, asthma is a physical ailment as being a woman isn't, but that only means it's even more unfair for asthmatic men. Why don't they deserve the same extra consideration as women do, to compensate for their physical handicaps?
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On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:
1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted.
2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs.
3. Figure out the mental, physical and psychological standard for job x. Figure out ways to test those standards. Let Men, Women, Jews and Muslims, Blacks and Whites compete according to that standard.
Truly equal treatment has a tendency to not result in nice even amounts of people from every possible category. It gives everyone the exact same chance to compete and reduces the cut-off to things almost entirely biological and/or cultural.
The original issue comes from people believing that men and women are so equal that they need to fill 50% of the slots each. Lowering standards across the board should be unacceptable, different standards simply based on gender are nothing but discriminatory.
If it was up to me I'd have one general lowest possible standard (most likely close to the lowest female standard) and then up the bar depending on what jobs people want to do. There are enough things people not close to the best of the best physically can do but it should be possible to do those kind things for both men and women, judged by the same standard.
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On September 21 2013 01:43 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair? So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia. It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response. When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions: 1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted. 2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest. It is my contention that asthmatic men have a different physical make-up than non-asthmatic men, and may require a different set of physical standards, perhaps the same as the female ones. As you must know, asthmatic men have poorer oxygen uptake on average than non-asthmatic men. The army isn't going to put 50lbs of equipment on the back of an asthmatic man or female or weak man, period. Just because the the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for asthmatics and non-asthmatics doesn't mean one group is going to get it easy when they get in. Indeed, asthma is a physical ailment as being a woman isn't, but that only means it's even more unfair for asthmatic men. Why don't they deserve the same extra consideration as women do, to compensate for their physical handicaps?
Because being a woman isn't a physical handicap.
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On September 21 2013 08:17 r.Evo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:
1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted.
2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. 3. Figure out the mental, physical and psychological standard for job x. Figure out ways to test those standards. Let Men, Women, Jews and Muslims, Blacks and Whites compete according to that standard. Truly equal treatment has a tendency to not result in nice even amounts of people from every possible category. It gives everyone the exact same chance to compete and reduces the cut-off to things almost entirely biological and/or cultural. The original issue comes from people believing that men and women are so equal that they need to fill 50% of the slots each. Lowering standards across the board should be unacceptable, different standards simply based on gender are nothing but discriminatory. If it was up to me I'd have one general lowest possible standard (most likely close to the lowest female standard) and then up the bar depending on what jobs people want to do. There are enough things people not close to the best of the best physically can do but it should be possible to do those kind things for both men and women, judged by the same standard.
I know those aren't the only two options. My was that these extremely opinionated people have these drastically unrealistic solutions and expectations that don't work. One of the TL users posted something along the lines of "Women shouldn't be in the military because they are weaker, end of discussion" and I wanted to know why he thought that. He still hasn't answered me.
It is sometimes difficult to discuss something sensitive like this without someone trying to turn it into an argument, so I was begging the question of what these people who are so anti or pro double-standard want and most especially, why. I know there are a lot of women who want to join the military. I'm not one of them, but I understand that there are a lot of incentives to join the military, and although the women at the ground level just want to join the service and get a fair shot like everyone else and do their best to serve in the military, above them, and completely unrelated to their views about the world, political action committees have lobbied the government to adjust the military's recruitment methodology to attract more women into the armed services. Is this necessarily a problem though? In some cases, there may be problems here and there, but I don't see there being a massive undermining of the entire armed forces. In many cases, I think this has opened up a lot of opportunities for women that didn't exist before. As far as combat-readiness goes, I believe as long as the military properly trains their personnel and has the proper funding, equipment and logistics, the U.S. armed forces will remain a very strong fighting force, regardless of the controversy over entrance standards.
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On September 21 2013 01:31 Darkwhite wrote:
Finally, let me state this as clearly as possible: I am only interested in discussing the pros and cons of different male and female standards.
Guess that's why you were unfairly dismissive to my points. You're narrow minded. As for the rest, everything I said stands, you just decided to call it off topic, and you maneuver around my points.
I read the long list of events that you've laid down because you're probably some sort of OCD, and I'm forced to say, I was wrong, you're not lazy, you're just very selective of what you want to hear about and what you want to discuss.
I won't respond to everything you said because you're ignoring my points and it'll get ridiculous with the "I said you said he said I said..." I'll still respond about the general state of what's been going on.
That is, supporting different standards, tautologically, if it is done correctly, without even attempting what's the correct way of doing it and why it would be beneficial, which I have repeatedly asked you to explain.
I emphasized multiple times that different situations require different standards, and you're asking me to point out specifically what to do? I'm not an expert on any of these things, how could I possibly know how to build standards which integrate women without being detrimental to the organization's functions?
I am however saying that it is possible to have positive discrimination which is acceptable, when the resulting "negative discrimination" counter-balances the previously existing inequalities, whether they are inherent or social. How, exactly, I don't know! Every situation has its set of constraints so I can't give you specifics. I'm merely saying that it's possible.
As an artificial example, say some government agency is hiring for a physical job that pays well. Many people are interested so the agency decides to weed out certain people by have some physical standard test, and people who don't pass it, while quite possibly more than competent enough, are automatically rejected. By its nature, it tends to reject more women than men, perhaps unfairly so. For any number of reason, that standard could be difficult to changes (administrations are dumb and unwieldy, or previously rejected people would have grounds for lawsuits, whatever). Given that the situation is inherently unfair, it may not be entirely wrong to have positive discrimination for women so that they can make the arbitrary cutoff which was just an artificial way to weed out people, provided that said women are also good for the job. You could argue that men are discriminated against, but women were, in the situation, discriminated against first. The change, whatever it is, tries to recenter things. Now it's entirely possible that this could tip the balance the other way around and that's not what I'm saying should happen. So I can't discuss with you the specific measures because I can't just wing artificial numbers for you. That said, although you don't like to hear it for whatever bullshit reasons you may have, it's preferable, when possible to have more reasonable and more relevant standards in the first place, when it's possible, rather than to split the genders.
Most of what we disagree with is bullshit semantics and details, but this is where we clash. I would argue that it's because you're not a sensible person and you're more interested in holding your ground. You are egotistically defending your flawed, overly rigid moral compass and refuse to actually think about shit. You act as if you put equality on this great pedestal and any attempt to be more egalitarian by tipping the balance is, according to you, unfair.
If you were the kind of person who actually thinks out of the box, you couldn't possibly be comfortable with such a shallow and narrow conclusion... but you've said it yourself: You are "only interested in discussing the pros and cons of different male and female standards.". You intentionally limit, for yourself, the spectrum of this discussion, which could be a lot more dynamic and interesting if adjacent arguments could be brought in.
We could agree to disagree, if you want. Or we could elaborate and keep hurling shit at each other. But to summarize I think that, when the standards are unfair, we can change the standards, but if the standards don't change and remain unfair, then it's ok to do some positive discrimination to counterbalance the otherwise inegalitarian situation. You disagree. Fine.
Cheers.
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On September 15 2013 14:45 TyrantPotato wrote:
I see it like this.
If you want job A you must meet requirements XYZ
Gender ignored. Thats equality.
Would u like to be rescued by a firefighter which has minimum requirement of 10 (male) or minimum requirement of 8 (female).
If u phrase the question like that. Id bet 100% would choose 10 if they were ignorant of the gender behind the numbers.
Those 10 and 8 just example numbers ftr
Yeah this. Most qualified person gets the job, genetics or not.
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On September 21 2013 08:58 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 01:31 Darkwhite wrote:
Finally, let me state this as clearly as possible: I am only interested in discussing the pros and cons of different male and female standards. Guess that's why you were unfairly dismissive to my points. You're narrow minded. As for the rest, everything I said stands, you just decided to call it off topic, and you maneuver around my points. I read the long list of events that you've laid down because you're probably some sort of OCD, and I'm forced to say, I was wrong, you're not lazy, you're just very selective of what you want to hear about and what you want to discuss. I won't respond to everything you said because you're ignoring my points and it'll get ridiculous with the "I said you said he said I said..." I'll still respond about the general state of what's been going on.
The thread is about different female standards, your first post was about positive discrimination, my direct reply likewise. How is it narrow minded to try to keep the discussion focused on this instead of going all over the place on all sorts of re- and unrelated tangents? Why is it ridiculous to point to the things you've already written in here? I thought your posts represented your opinions?
Show nested quote +That is, supporting different standards, tautologically, if it is done correctly, without even attempting what's the correct way of doing it and why it would be beneficial, which I have repeatedly asked you to explain. I emphasized multiple times that different situations require different standards, and you're asking me to point out specifically what to do? I'm not an expert on any of these things, how could I possibly know how to build standards which integrate women without being detrimental to the organization's functions?
Different situations require different standards - and we're still in the land of tautology. I hope you have some idea about how to build standards which integrate women without being detrimental to the organization's functions, though, because you have been suggesting a solution, i.e. female-positive male-negative discrimination.
I am however saying that it is possible to have positive discrimination which is acceptable, when the resulting "negative discrimination" counter-balances the previously existing inequalities, whether they are inherent or social. How, exactly, I don't know! Every situation has its set of constraints so I can't give you specifics. I'm merely saying that it's possible.
I really need the specifics, because whether discrimination and inequalities cancel out or make things even worse is not at all obvious. If you leave out one of the steps between positive discrimination and problem solved, then you have a lot of faith and very little argument. While gut feeling is fine when you're shopping for dinner, I hoped for something a bit more stringent to explain why a man loses out a woman who tests worse.
As an artificial example, say some government agency is hiring for a physical job that pays well. Many people are interested so the agency decides to weed out certain people by have some physical standard test, and people who don't pass it, while quite possibly more than competent enough, are automatically rejected. By its nature, it tends to reject more women than men, perhaps unfairly so. For any number of reason, that standard could be difficult to changes (administrations are dumb and unwieldy, or previously rejected people would have grounds for lawsuits, whatever). Given that the situation is inherently unfair, it may not be entirely wrong to have positive discrimination for women so that they can make the arbitrary cutoff which was just an artificial way to weed out people, provided that said women are also good for the job. You could argue that men are discriminated against, but women were, in the situation, discriminated against first. The change, whatever it is, tries to recenter things. Now it's entirely possible that this could tip the balance the other way around and that's not what I'm saying should happen. So I can't discuss with you the specific measures because I can't just wing artificial numbers for you. That said, although you don't like to hear it for whatever bullshit reasons you may have, it's preferable, when possible to have more reasonable and more relevant standards in the first place, when it's possible, rather than to split the genders.
See my added bold: For a physical test to unfairly reject more women than men, women failing need to be more likely to be suitable for the job than the men failing the test. This is exactly what I have been asking you to substantiate for about five posts - not just that it's thinkable, but to give some real world case where positive discrimination should be used to counteract it. I do agree that, given this condition you have assumed without argument, a lower female standard would make sense.
Most of what we disagree with is bullshit semantics and details, but this is where we clash. I would argue that it's because you're not a sensible person and you're more interested in holding your ground. You are egotistically defending your flawed, overly rigid moral compass and refuse to actually think about shit. You act as if you put equality on this great pedestal and any attempt to be more egalitarian by tipping the balance is, according to you, unfair.
If you were the kind of person who actually thinks out of the box, you couldn't possibly be comfortable with such a shallow and narrow conclusion... but you've said it yourself: You are "only interested in discussing the pros and cons of different male and female standards.". You intentionally limit, for yourself, the spectrum of this discussion, which could be a lot more dynamic and interesting if adjacent arguments could be brought in.
We could agree to disagree, if you want. Or we could elaborate and keep hurling shit at each other. But to summarize I think that, when the standards are unfair, we can change the standards, but if the standards don't change and remain unfair, then it's ok to do some positive discrimination to counterbalance the otherwise inegalitarian situation. You disagree. Fine.
Cheers.
I am defending equality as a baseline and requesting an actual argument for why discrimination would improve on it. Equality does deserve to be put on a pedestal - it is the principle by which women were given the right to vote, to divorce their husbands and hold the same offices as men, for starters. It doesn't trump all other concerns, but should not be violated lightly.
I do think that limiting the scope of the discussion is the best way to give it its due attention.
Finally, I have trouble pinning down what you're actually saying at the end. Are either of these accurate?
a) Lower, unisex physical requirements using other tests to select for the relevant qualities would be the best solution. Failing this, lowering the standards for women only is a step in the right direction.
b) The ideal physical requirements would be lower for women than men.
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On September 21 2013 08:30 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 01:43 Darkwhite wrote:On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair? So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia. It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response. When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions: 1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted. 2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest. It is my contention that asthmatic men have a different physical make-up than non-asthmatic men, and may require a different set of physical standards, perhaps the same as the female ones. As you must know, asthmatic men have poorer oxygen uptake on average than non-asthmatic men. The army isn't going to put 50lbs of equipment on the back of an asthmatic man or female or weak man, period. Just because the the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for asthmatics and non-asthmatics doesn't mean one group is going to get it easy when they get in. Indeed, asthma is a physical ailment as being a woman isn't, but that only means it's even more unfair for asthmatic men. Why don't they deserve the same extra consideration as women do, to compensate for their physical handicaps? Because being a woman isn't a physical handicap.
You just explained how women, on average, have shorter legs, which is detrimental to running quickly. I guess we can agree that asthma is also detrimental to running quickly. I thought it made sense to say that both of these conditions were handicaps, for performing, physically, compared to being a man, but that's not the important part. I realize than being asthmatic and being women are not functionally identical.
Can you please point, not only to asthma and womanhood being different, but the relevant differences which explain why women should have a lower standard, but not asthmatics?
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On September 23 2013 09:25 Darkwhite wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 08:30 ninazerg wrote:On September 21 2013 01:43 Darkwhite wrote:On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair? So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia. It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response. When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions: 1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted. 2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest. It is my contention that asthmatic men have a different physical make-up than non-asthmatic men, and may require a different set of physical standards, perhaps the same as the female ones. As you must know, asthmatic men have poorer oxygen uptake on average than non-asthmatic men. The army isn't going to put 50lbs of equipment on the back of an asthmatic man or female or weak man, period. Just because the the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for asthmatics and non-asthmatics doesn't mean one group is going to get it easy when they get in. Indeed, asthma is a physical ailment as being a woman isn't, but that only means it's even more unfair for asthmatic men. Why don't they deserve the same extra consideration as women do, to compensate for their physical handicaps? Because being a woman isn't a physical handicap. You just explained how women, on average, have shorter legs, which is detrimental to running quickly. I guess we can agree that asthma is also detrimental to running quickly. I thought it made sense to say that both of these conditions were handicaps, for performing, physically, compared to being a man, but that's not the important part. I realize than being asthmatic and being women are not functionally identical. Can you please point, not only to asthma and womanhood being different, but the relevant differences which explain why women should have a lower standard, but not asthmatics?
You're confused as to what asthma is. It affects your breathing, not your ability to run. You can take medication for asthma, but you can't go to the doctor and say "Hey, I feel really womany, can you prescribe me something for that?"
I said on average, most women are shorter than men. That means some women are taller than men and vice-versa. Given that, *generally*, women have less muscle mass than men, and have shorter frames, it makes a lot of sense that the general test would change depending on sex.
The difference between a "weak" person and a medical condition is that a weak person can become stronger, whereas, depending on the ailment, many medical conditions cannot be remedied. Such as asthma.
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On September 23 2013 09:11 Darkwhite wrote:
Finally, I have trouble pinning down what you're actually saying at the end. Are either of these accurate?
a) Lower, unisex physical requirements using other tests to select for the relevant qualities would be the best solution. Failing this, lowering the standards for women only is a step in the right direction.
b) The ideal physical requirements would be lower for women than men.
Where possible, have one universal physical requirement for both men and women. This requirement should be fixed for practical purposes (physical characteristics that are required to do the job), as opposed to using it as a tool to reject potential candidates. By fixing it to be practical, in many cases it would make the standards more achievable for women (they're currently, in many cases, more unfair than they need to be because they're used for selection purposes).
Basically, I agree with "a" for the most part. And I would only agree with lowering the physical standards for women if doing so is "practical". Essentially, I don't think it's a very optimal way to go about it, but for reasons I've brought up, sometimes you have to run around the pot a little to get shit done when it comes down to old rules and whatnot.
TLDR: When possible, it's better not to use high physical standards for selective purposes unless the fixed physical standards are truly necessary for every member of whatever group it is.
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On September 23 2013 10:12 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2013 09:25 Darkwhite wrote:On September 21 2013 08:30 ninazerg wrote:On September 21 2013 01:43 Darkwhite wrote:On September 20 2013 16:10 ninazerg wrote:On September 20 2013 00:48 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 17:12 ninazerg wrote:On September 19 2013 05:19 Djzapz wrote:On September 19 2013 02:28 iamho wrote:
If women were given the physically easier jobs like "shooting water" as firefighters, they'd also get paid lower wages. Which means masses of sexual discrimination lawsuits against municipal governments. I'm saying it should be. Not it legally yaddayadda... Sexual equality will be reached when weak/skinny men are also given affirmative action and weaker standards.
And no, anti-male discrimination won't help women in this context. In intellectual pursuits maybe, but no amount of discrimination will give women male strength. Beside the point entirely. On September 19 2013 03:01 Darkwhite wrote:On September 19 2013 01:57 Djzapz wrote:I personally believe that the fair compromise is somewhere between 1 and 2 and probably needs to be considered on a case by case basis. Positive discrimination is fine for a variety of reasons, namely the fact that women are typically disadvantages (socially and physically speaking) so there's nothing with trying to equalize it, so long as it doesn't affect others negatively. Positive discrimination is just an euphemistic phrase for giving someone a comparative advantage on the basis of otherwise irrelevant criteria such as sex or race, over the people who would have gotten the positions given an level playing field. You may argue that the benefits outweigh the downsides - this is largely dependent on your values - but pretending there's any way others won't be negatively affected is nothing but doublespeak. Men are clearly disadvantaged by this. Good fucking thing we''ve got a bunch of other advantages to make up for it. White dudes whining is the bane of my existence, and I'm a whiny white dude. In most domains where you get tested for physical strength and whatnot, presumably in many cases there are jobs where you don't need it. If that's so, then why not hire people who perhaps are as physically strong, but are perhaps better suited for other jobs? Anyhow, I don't know why people keep ragging on affirmative action since that's not what this thread is about. When it comes down to it, you always want the most qualified individuals for a job. In an "ideal" world where there is no bias anywhere, women would still be allowed to join the military, and serve in combat conditions. I know hating on women's rights is the cool thing right now, come on. But did you guys know... men are actually taller than women? That's right - men have longer legs on average, and therefore, each step in a running stride will cover slightly more distance. Is it enough to justify the times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel. This thread is literally about affirmative action. Feel free to compare the use of different standards for men and women with Wikipedia's article on affirmative action here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_actionWe do indeed know that men are taller than women. However, physical requirements are not about giving everybody a fair chance, they are about being able to do your job. If you want to go down the fair chance route - did you know people with asthma have trouble breathing? Should they have their own standards to make it all fair? So, cool. You're linking me to wikipedia. It is my contention that "women" are not a disadvantaged group, and therefore do not require any extra benefits due to underrepresentation. However, women do have a different physical make-up than men, and may require a different set of physical standards. This is why I said "Is it [the differences between men and women physically] enough to justify the [minimum running distance] times the military has? Probably not, but there's always room for improvement when it comes to recruiting and training personnel." and if you would have actually read that part, you'd see that I'm trying to put forward a well-balanced response. When I say that women have shorter legs ON AVERAGE than men, and I mean that in a very general way. However, being a woman isn't a medical ailment like asthma is. That's a very unfair comparison. When someone joins the military, they might not be very physically fit, so if they want to get high marks and get a prestigious position like a sniper, then they better bust their ass, no matter what. The army isn't going to put 50 lbs of equipment on the back of weak man or woman, period. Just because the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for men and women doesn't mean one gender is going to get it easy when they get in. If that's not happening, then we have to do either two over-simplified solutions: 1. Fix the standards of the military so women get an equal ass-kicking to the men while enlisted. 2. Come together as a society to agree that women are weaker than men and should get easier jobs. Is that what you want to hear? What do you guys want, exactly? Because we live in a real world where no one-size-fits-all, and that reality collides with a predominately male-dominated organization designed to transform a collective cornucopia of varying individuals and mold them into near-identical fighting machines while political action committees spend exorbitant amounts of money to lobby the government to incorporate more "women and minorities" into institutions that have to face the complexity of changing their traditions while preserving their core principles. Or do you just want to argue, because that facet of this discussion is being handled poorly and slothfully incrementally by jargon-spewing politicos on C-SPAN who inevitably will come up with a nonsensical 'solution' that actually solves nothing until that solution's legislation is reviewed by a panel of bureaucrats who decide to add amendments to the original statutes with a bunch of retroactive legislation to close all the loopholes and form a bureau to oversee the renewed legislation, which will be defunded 6 months later in some political back-door deal that will grant the opposing party twenty million dollars to fund some initiative that nobody asked for, and it will be all over MSNBC for like a week until their ratings get so bad that they decide to headline their news with the latest Lindsay Lohan arrest. It is my contention that asthmatic men have a different physical make-up than non-asthmatic men, and may require a different set of physical standards, perhaps the same as the female ones. As you must know, asthmatic men have poorer oxygen uptake on average than non-asthmatic men. The army isn't going to put 50lbs of equipment on the back of an asthmatic man or female or weak man, period. Just because the the minimum physical requirements for joining the military are different for asthmatics and non-asthmatics doesn't mean one group is going to get it easy when they get in. Indeed, asthma is a physical ailment as being a woman isn't, but that only means it's even more unfair for asthmatic men. Why don't they deserve the same extra consideration as women do, to compensate for their physical handicaps? Because being a woman isn't a physical handicap. You just explained how women, on average, have shorter legs, which is detrimental to running quickly. I guess we can agree that asthma is also detrimental to running quickly. I thought it made sense to say that both of these conditions were handicaps, for performing, physically, compared to being a man, but that's not the important part. I realize than being asthmatic and being women are not functionally identical. Can you please point, not only to asthma and womanhood being different, but the relevant differences which explain why women should have a lower standard, but not asthmatics? You're confused as to what asthma is.
Maybe. At least my posts aren't riddled with falsehoods.
It affects your breathing, not your ability to run.
Literally false. Breathing is a very important part of running, just like stride (which is related to long legs).
You can take medication for asthma, but you can't go to the doctor and say "Hey, I feel really womany, can you prescribe me something for that?"
Also false. Read up on transsexuality or testosterone. More importantly, why does this distinction matter?
I said on average, most women are shorter than men. That means some women are taller than men and vice-versa. Given that, *generally*, women have less muscle mass than men, and have shorter frames, it makes a lot of sense that the general test would change depending on sex.
With the appropriate substitutions, all of this is true for asthma as well. Some asthmatics run faster than non-asthmatic men, though they generally have poorer respiration.
The difference between a "weak" person and a medical condition is that a weak person can become stronger, whereas, depending on the ailment, many medical conditions cannot be remedied. Such as asthma.
Being asthmatic and being a woman are both generally lifelong conditions. Both put you at a competitive disadvantage compared to men. Both groups contain individuals who are fitter than most males. Both groups respond to exercise and/or medication to become stronger. What is the relevant difference, again?
On September 23 2013 10:25 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2013 09:11 Darkwhite wrote:
Finally, I have trouble pinning down what you're actually saying at the end. Are either of these accurate?
a) Lower, unisex physical requirements using other tests to select for the relevant qualities would be the best solution. Failing this, lowering the standards for women only is a step in the right direction.
b) The ideal physical requirements would be lower for women than men. Where possible, have one universal physical requirement for both men and women. This requirement should be fixed for practical purposes (physical characteristics that are required to do the job), as opposed to using it as a tool to reject potential candidates. By fixing it to be practical, in many cases it would make the standards more achievable for women (they're currently, in many cases, more unfair than they need to be because they're used for selection purposes). Basically, I agree with "a" for the most part. And I would only agree with lowering the physical standards for women if doing so is "practical". Essentially, I don't think it's a very optimal way to go about it, but for reasons I've brought up, sometimes you have to run around the pot a little to get shit done when it comes down to old rules and whatnot. TLDR: When possible, it's better not to use high physical standards for selective purposes unless the fixed physical standards are truly necessary for every member of whatever group it is.
Would you then agree that unisex standards are the ideal, and that you don't prefer laxer female standards to sensible unisex standards, only to senseless unisex standards?
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I agree that unisex standards are the best when possible, and laxer female physical standards are a less elegant alternative, although I would argue that it's more viable than an unfair and unpractical unisex standard.
Like I said, it all boils down to using physical standards for practical purposes as opposed to selection purposes. If that's not directly possible, you go around it and establish another standard - it's clumsy but there you go.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/military_bun.jpeg)
