There is latitude in our opinions on women in combat here at IWF.
As the resident curmudgeon, who's agin it, I want to call your attention to an article at The Federalist on the issue by Travis Scott.
Scott points out that the defense authorization bill passed in the House last week did not include a provision that would require women to sign up for the draft. The Supreme Court has held that it is constitutional to exclude this segment of the population from the draft.
But the Court relied on the restrictions against women engaging in conflict on the front line as the basis for the ruling, and that has changed. Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all positions to women last year.
I would argue that this is the triumph of ideology over biology and civilized values and applaud Scott for zeroing in on the question that matters now: Will the presence of a woman in combat negatively affect an infantry unit? Making the issue about anything else, says Scott, misses the point of having a military:
Some people may find the language in that sentence objectionable and sexist, but because it directly deals with the effectiveness of our military (and therefore our nation’s security) it has to be asked. Bloodthirsty warriors out to slaughter you and your kids are not going care about your feelings. They are only going to care if they can kill you.
If women have higher injury rates than males; are less effective combatants; or their presence might distract male soldiers from being as effective as they would be in an all-male environment; or a woman being injured and killed in combat has a more dramatic effect on soldiers’ morale, then putting women into combat is a bad idea.
Simply put, implementing bad ideas into military policies will ruin the effectiveness of that military. It could get more people hurt and killed, and jeopardize the nation’s safety. People who knowingly implement bad policies that put people’s lives at risk and our nation’s security in jeopardy should be held accountable.
. . .
The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once said that “Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.” It has long been tradition that women never enter combat because having women slaughtered is a sure way to endanger the entire society, since low ratios of women inhibit the creation of the next generation more than low ratios of men. Also, putting women on the battlefield changes the psychology of every male soldier for the worse, period.
Other matters to be considered: that the bodies of men and women are different, and that women "are not capable fighters against men." The latter is particularly unpalatable to feminists and other advocates of hurling women into bloody contact with, say, highly unpleasant solders of the Islamic State.
War is a male-dominated domain. Everyone up to this point in history has understood why: If the fighting were left in the hands of women, this country’s spaces for freedom and the pursuit of happiness we hold so dear would not exist. That’s because women cannot physically compete against men en masse.
The world is deadly and cruel. Ideas of fairness and equality are social constructs that are upheld solely by the might of men. If women receive fair treatment in public or civil life, it is because strong men have provided safe arenas so society can grant this to them. Gender equality is not a concept that exists outside of industrialized societies because biological realities constantly reinforce the physical inequality of men and women.
The most effective female-on-male violence you see is in the movies, where a single 110-pound female can take out a crew of men who weigh 215 pounds each. The vast majority of women (if not literally every woman you know) will boast that they can do everything a man can do—until it involves fists. Women retreat from this domain, falling back on some moral code that says, while woman are “equal” in the highest ideological way, they are not physically equal to men. From here many will infer that it is a man’s moral imperative not to strike women, ever, because it would be sadistic, evil, and “unfair.”
I find it ironic that the most vocal supporters of the Violence Against Women Act are probably the same people who believe it is a matter of "fairness" to send women straight at men who want to kill them.