Ofcourse. The old concept of infantry is fastly becoming outdated.

If the point of/goal from debating is to sway another to your side or brow beat them to your side then being hostile towards 'em will never do that. it will just escalate into something more every time.  He could have legimate reasons for what he believes but even though he disagrees with most of everyone in the thread, he's being nice about it. 

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/20/us/jessica-lynch-where-is-she-now/

I dont know how many of you rememer when Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner in Iraq-  Jessica was a cute  blond haired blu eyed girl --  in other words much closer to "the girl next door" than the "bull dyke"    

She was not in a "fighting unit" but due a series of events she was captured and her photo was on te Natonal news every day-   Had the Iraqi side not been already so beat up and it s leadership in disaray, they could have/would hav used this national trauma (in the Us) much more strategiclly than they did-

Her rscue was of the highet importance and she was rescued-  She was treated with a hero s welcome and the military, media and politicians wrapped up her story in a nice neat "hero bow"  = It was told she had fought valiantly till eventally sudueded  by her captors-  a regular GI Jane etc etc you get the point

They kept the rape and sexual assault she endured quiet  among oter truth s of her story that she eventually set straight years later

This is no knock on Jessica Lynch whatsoever-  She is a wounded veteran and former POW-     The gist of the story is that her story was not unique in Iraq but it was treated that way thru no fault of he own- 

If anyone thinks women on the front lines will have to maintain standards now in place for men, they are naive, have not takn into account  existing examples like this one among many others and just just not very wise- 

The standards for women will not be the same no matter how much it is said otherwise-  ther will be no equality due to political pressures and media pressure to "make the story work" 

It will be yet another farce of "equality" were it generally does not exiist-  

If anyone thinks a platoon of women captured and exploited by the enemy won t be used by the enemy  to their  advantage many mulitples more so than a platoon of men- you are in denial   

No matter how hard some people wil try to pretend otherwise, men and women are DIFFERENT-  There will ALWAYS be areas in life/society etc. were those natural differences will be an advantage in some ways and a disadvantage in others

DIFFERENT does not mean less than or greater than as a whole

This is all about politics and BS and nothing to do with a Natioanl need for female front line soldiers -  As much as an over seas enemy would use captued women to their advantage ,  it would be nothing to various political groups at home-   Women on the front lines would be used as political pawns  by many but none would use them as much as the groups/ ideologies,/people that are pushing the hardest to make this happen now

I can't believe people are battling to go to war... like it's some nice activity to do and women should get equal rights and participate in them too. Shouldn't we care more about how not to go to war? I would be the last one to go into a war to kill people I know nothing of for reasons I don't know either and am not allowed to question.

Also to me it's very mindboggling how some still refuse to acknowledge that women in general are physicaly different from men. It's not some ideology that patriarchy is guilty off... it's our biology for god's sake. Mammals are made like that. Males are bigger and stronger and sometimes strenght is required for certain jobs. Ofc if a woman can do it then let her do it but don't push women in the front line for the sake of gender equality... this is stupid as f***!

I must disagree there, I think public debating is done for the benefit of a third person (i. e. people who listen/read). It is extremely unlikely that you will ever sway your opposition into your line of thinking, especially if they have no motivation to do so (no profit from reaching a consensus). And in that case, displaying hostility towards your opposition might be a good move if done correctly, especially when the majority of people are on your side.

It's got nothing to do with the military. This is ingrained in our culture, in our popular culture and our historcal  gender division. These ingrained beliefs unconsciously affect our decision-making.

In terms of the study in that article there are some major biases in the study that make it a very flawed study, and the article identifies that.

"The average male Marine in the study weighed 178 lbs. and had 20% body fat. The average woman weighed 142 lbs. and had 24% body fat." Body fat is largely irrelevant, but if you pit a group of men with an averafge body weight of 178lbs vs a grou of men with an average body weight of 142lbs you will most likely get a similar outcome. Hence that is a methodological bias which will affect the outcome of the study which actually has nothing to do with gender. If your group of women had na average body weight of 178lbs and 24% body fat then my hypothesis is that there would be little to no difference.

Also "Officials cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the study. Better training and screening could boost female performance, for example. "We can get better on injuries," Weinberg said. "We can get better on strength. We can get better on training." And "once women have had more experience in the infantry their performance will rise. "The women don’t have the training that men had to begin with,". 

The study was flawed. But importantly it showed that minimum standards can't be compromised to achieve some kind of quota. If the women are required to make the same standard as men squad gender make up should become irrelevant to performance.

It's probably true that women aren't as effective as men when engaging in the highly physical warfare of the past. I mean, how many women do you see in top sports leagues like NFL, Premiere League, NHL? These are incredibly physical games and while I have no doubt that there are a significant number of women out there who could whip me as an average male any day, the top 1% of men will still outclass the top 1% of women by a significant margin in most physically grueling activities.

That being said, I think the days of physically intense warfare are coming to an end in the near future. Drones and robots will likely be the future of warfare before the end of this century and so I think men dominating frontline warfare is going to become a moot point, regardless.

If there was conscription of women forcing them into combat roles you might have a point. But this is about allowing women to volunteer for roles for which they meet the minimum criteria. No one is forcing women into this. What's chainging is the forces are no longer forcing women to stay out.

It mainly depends on how deeply they believe something. Sometimes, it just take evidence or present your arguement in the right words or show them a line of logic to change their mind. Sometimes, nothing will sway 'em and that's fine because there's many different perspectives on many things and in most cases, there's no one truth or right way.

@bolded How would that be a good move? 

i can understand meeting hostility with hostility but not being hostile to someone who isn't unless you're trying to provoke them or eventually come to blows with 'em.

In what competetive activity do men NOT outclass women?