What do you think about the Soviets using women in World War 2?

[ChefPapiChulo]

What do you think about women in the military today?

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

Women can make very fine snipers according to male snipers I've encountered, like Lyudmila Pavlichenko:

Apparently 309 confirmed kills and likely many more in actuality. I've heard some of the ability for women to make very competent snipers in their own right attributed to the fact that women tend to be less fidgety than men and also have superior color perception.

Personally I'm a hardcore individualists and meritocrat. I believe as much as possible in judging people on an individual basis. I realize practicality might require some degree of generalization but I think we should try, whenever resources are available, to evaluate people as individuals.

So I'm down with letting whoever is best suited for the job, military or otherwise, to do the job. What I don't approve of is lowering standards based on some group in which a person belongs in. That's anti-meritocratic. If the standards weren't good evaluators of job ability, then it should be lowered for everyone. If they were good evaluators of ability, then it shouldn't be lowered for anyone.

[ChefPapiChulo]

What about the brutality of war? Women are raised differently which may affect their ability to handle the violence of war.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

That's getting into some very deeply personal views of mine, but I think that's something that I think could and should be corrected sociologically.

Sometimes I get accused of sexism since I glorify a lot of traits people might have traditionally called "masculine" like Stoic thinking, courage, honor, honesty, integrity, leadership qualities, protecting others who cannot protect themselves, etc. I believe while some degree of balance of "masculine" and "feminine" traits is ideal, I think what we classically associated is "masculine" ideals is better-adapted towards cultivating individuals that are to become leaders, providers, protectors, soldiers, entrepreneurs, etc.

Yet a difference and why I'm not sexist is that I don't assign what we're calling "masculine" here to men. I'm maybe a "genderist" instead. I think women can develop these traits just as much as men if they are raised and educated the same way and held to the same standards.

Japanese women are much more "masculine" than a lot of Western women this way and I think in a good way. They're usually far more difficult to offend or upset, can be very brave in dangerous situations, etc. Traditionally we also had female soldiers like Onna-Musha who fought on the front lines together with Samurai:




They were often skilled in Naginata and horse archery and even women who didn't fight in the front lines were always viewed as the last bastion of defense if their husbands fell in battle to protect their family. So women were raised to be tough traditionally and still often are in ways that I think is beneficial to society.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I often see modern society moving the opposite direction, glorifying the "feminine" and downplaying the important of the "masculine", encouraging more "feminine" men and women.

And I think that's a big, big mistake. I actually think we need more "masculine" people (men or women), because "masculinity" is what has been adapted and refined and proven in history throughout cultures to produce strong leaders, protectors, providers, soldiers, etc. If it wasn't well-adapted for this purpose, then what we associate as "femininity" would have been the favored traits of men, most likely, to make them better leaders and providers and protectors and so forth.

So I think we're doing it all wrong. We should be encouraging more "masculinity" instead as I see it in both men and women.

[ChefPapiChulo]

Oh yeah definitely they can be. It probably is a culture thing. And in the case of the Soviets, they had to use anyone they could to fight off the Nazis.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I suspect it's often that kind of strong need that prompts cultures to place women in military positions more. I think there's a natural (not to conflate "natural" with "right") biological bias to be averse to doing so, since males are more biologically expendable than females from a practical perspective as women are the only ones who can be impregnated. Like a tribe with a whole bunch of males and few females has a bleak future. A tribe with a whole bunch of females and few males might still have a future.

Again not to conflate "natural" with "right" but I suspect we all have that bias at some instinctive level to want to keep women out of harm's way more than men. It might be worth overcoming that bias though when it starts to become counter-productive.

[SolitarySolace]

Its about time they die just as often as the men

[ChefPapiChulo]

What the fuck?

[SolitarySolace]

They wanted to be equal to men right? This is how they do it

[ChefPapiChulo]

Get off my question.