Women in combat: Who put sand in your vaginas?
Good soldier? Not with that vagina she ain't!
MRAs often complain bitterly that men have to register for the draft and women don’t. Ironically, many MRAs – sometimes the very same people – also think that women shouldn’t be allowed in the armed forces at all, or at the very least should be barred from direct combat.
One MRA who’s staunchly against women in combat is a Redditor calling himself Demonspawn. In a recent comment he sets forth “four huge reasons” why. The first is a doozy:
The vagina. You can’t keep it clean in battlefield conditions. Military regulations state that women on extended training exercises must have access to garrison or equivalent facilities for hygiene at least once every X number of days (usually 7). Why? Because otherwise you run a very high risk of a vaginal infection and can die from it. Those facilities cannot be guaranteed on the battlefield and therefore it is an even greater risk to women’s lives to use them as battlefield troops.
I’m surprised he forgot to mention the chronic problem of centipedes in the vagina.
The rest of his reasons are equally stupid, if not quite as amusing. Number two:
Public Relations. … Have you not read the articles when women soldiers die and it’s a big deal, while more dead male soldiers is just business as usual? Public support for war cannot be sustained in the face of massive female soldier casualties.
And three:
Men get themselves killed overprotecting women. This is the #1 reason Israel deintegrated their troops.
Yeah, it’s a terrible thing when soldiers try to protect one another.
His final reason returns us once again to the whole vagina thing:
Women tend to “get pregnant” when leaving for overseas trips… That destroys unit cohesion. Research the “pregnant navy” syndrome. One ship had over 40% of it’s female sailors suddenly become pregnant before an overseas trip.
I did a Google search for “pregnant navy.” In 2007, according to one article I found, roughly 11 percent of female soldiers had to be shifted to shore because they were pregnant; it’s usually less than that.
Women: trouble when their vaginas are infected, trouble when they’re clean. Why do we even let them leave the house?
Thanks to MuForceShoelace for posting the link to Demonspawn’s comment on the AgainstMensRights subreddit.
EDIT: I misread an article I originally cited about female crew members on a supply ship getting pregnant during the Gulf war. The percentage who got pregnant was 10%, not more than half. (In my defense, the article was badly worded.) I’ve removed the erroneous material.
Like this:
Posted on October 1, 2011, in disgusting women, I'm totally being sarcastic, misogyny, MRA, reddit, sex, vaginas. Bookmark the permalink. 323 Comments.
That makes even less sense. Rudimentary anatomy, you do not has it.
“That makes even less sense. Rudimentary anatomy, you do not has it.”
I guess technically you could get it under your clit hood (NSFW!), but I can’t say that’s ever happened to me, not even at the beach.
Molly Ren: I thought of that just as I hit post. But unless you’re committed to being naked in a really sandy area, I’m not seeing how it could be much of a problem. (I spent most of my life close to water and beaches and have never had this happen. Ever.)
Brandon: This is purely a point of technique. I’m trying, with this one, to show you some of the problems you have in making your case for things. I am not, in this comment making any arguments about the question we’ve been talking about, it just happens to be the handy example.
3) I didn’t say gender norming was slack and age norming was “A OK”. I pointed out the possible rationale that bureaucrats decided on why older men have to do less work than younger men. (e.g weaker bones, poorer health). That doesn’t make it is my rationale for doing so.
What you did was defend the one position, while not admitting any parallel to the other.
You didn’t, initially, say: Everyone, no matter what age, no matter what gender, should do the same PT test.
You gave reasons for the older men being allowed a lower standard.
You could have said, then and there, what your standards would be. That you didn’t is a form of silence, and silence = assent. When you added the explanation it moves to being a minor apologia.
If you look at this instance, you will see that the positions of myself, mythago, etc. haven’t changed. We pretty much put it all out in the first instance. When new arguments were added, we answered them, by showing that they didn’t actually address the point we made in the beginning.
It’s that sort of methodological error which leads to you getting reactions you don’t seem to expect. If you think a policy is stupid, unfair, poorly thought out, etc., you would be better served (and more likely to get less firm; and perhaps less oppositional) reactions if you didn’t assume people could read your mind. All we have is your words.
Brandon:
Hmm, I hope that boner went down before you got to work. XD
Bagelsan, have you ever seen that truly horrible game called Battle Raper? I feel like it was made for Brandon.
Even now after I haven’t been in the service for a while and haven’t been working out as much as I should…I bet I could still take down and disable most if not all the female soldiers.
I missed that. He’s behind the times; all soldiers are required to take/practice combatives (ie. hand to hand fighting, using a system which is based on brazilian ju-jitsu, with some krav-maga; which is new since he was in. I’ve been in combatives, level one training (the most basic) where a two minute open grapple had myself and the female soldier I was fighting travel a wide zig-zag of more than fifty yards across an open field; wrestling the entire time. We were both bruised and strained when we were done. Then we went back for more training. A non trivial number of level two, and a significant number of level three sessions end in the loser blacking out.
Except in combat arms units, all combatives training is mixed gender. As I said earlier, the 24th Infantry Division has division wide (and therefore open to females) competitions. Women have won them, beating the best competitors from the infantry battalions in the division.
So I don’t really think Brandon is as likely to take down and disable most of the female soldiers, and I guarantee he can’t take down all of them (not least because some of them are in training in other martial arts). A lot of them have been in combat zones, a non-trivial number have been in firefights. All of them know they could end up in those areas, and they train for it.
TL;DR: Brandon’s arrogant statement about how he could probably take down current soldiers even though he hasn’t been working out is full of hot air.
But I guess we knew that already.
@Moewicus: Can you substantiate that claim at all? No you can’t.
I have been in a few fights in my younger days. Even men taking full blown swings at my head weren’t all that painful.
While I don’t particularly like fighting, I am pretty sure even women punching or kicking me would be easily laughed at. Most of them just don’t have the strength to inflict any kind of meaningful pain on me or take me off my feet.
Just imagine a 5’6″ 130lb woman going up against a Patriots linebacker and you will get the idea of it.
It would take one exceptional woman to be able to win in a hand-to hand fight with me.
@Cassandra: I have never laid an unwanted hand on a woman and I have no plans on it. Hurting a woman doesn’t say very much about someones character.
@Pencunim: Taking martial arts doesn’t automatically make you a better fighter. I took co-ed ju-jitsu and every woman was unable to even keep me in holds without me breaking free easily. And this were women who have been training for years. The women in the class couldn’t even trip me nor could they force me into a vulnerable position. They were basically fighting a brick wall. They put more strain and damage on themselves then they inflicted on me. And just to make sure I didn’t end up hurting them, I held back and used only enough force to defeat whatever they were doing (holds, grapples, throws).
Shorter Brandon: *continues jerking it*
I totally believe that whole brick wall thing. It’s what I feel I’ve banged my head against after reading his weasel words.
Cool Story Bro.
Tonight on Man Boobz: Brandon, unable to stomach the idea that he might not be as articulate as he thinks he is, boasts about beating up entire platoons of women fighters.
Aren’t you guys just adorable
Nah, what’s adorable is you writing Marty Stu fanfic about yourself on manboobz.
Oh, FFS, Brandon, if we all told you how impressed we were, would you stop trying to get the last word and let this thread die a natural death?
You are very manly, have large muscles, and I have no doubt you can beat up every female body builder in the world. Simultaneously, while tied up and fighting the effects of the Hong Kong Cocktail. Will that do?
@kristinmh:
1) Not really.
2) No
I need more details on the fanfiction. Also, he needs to post a picture, like TAB, to convince us of his utter rightness.
Crap. Well, sorry, folks, I tried.
Actually, a movie of the event would do.
“Brandon’s taut muscles rippled like Chocolate Ripple ice cream as he flexed and stepped out of the line of recruits. The busty female drill sergeant felt her womanly heart flutter under her skimpy tanktop, her dainty knees trembling girlishly. Never before had she seen a man with such seething, raw masculine strength, and she knew with her feminine intuition that her years and years of combat experience wouldn’t stop this handsome godlike bodybuilder from wiping the floor with her like the simpering 90-pound 14-year-old girl every woman is deep inside. But that was okay, ’cause he was super hot and probably had a giant penis.
“‘Brandon!’ she sighed, as he threw her (and several other female soldiers) over one broad, rock-hard shoulder, ‘take me now, you hunk of powerful fighting man meat!’
“Then Brandon fought every single woman in the world in a row and won, killed about a million terrorists with his bare hands, got all the promotions, and went to Thailand for totally legitimate non-prostitute-related reasons.
“‘Mr. Brandon, you have saved the world!’ the President said.
“‘I know,’ said Brandon.
“THE END.”
Yeah! What’s up with you guys assuming that when he says something, he actually agrees with what he says? He could be intentionally saying things he disagrees with! He could just be saying random shit for no reason! You have no way to know!
Bagelsan, you’re going to need a bigger trophy cabinet to store all your Internets.
*bows* What can I say, douchebaggery is very inspirational! Just be glad I never got around to describing how his eyes change colors with his moods, or mentioning how he’s secretly rich and a genius, or using the word “throbbing.”
“Just be glad I never got around to describing how his eyes change colors with his moods”
Totally off topic here, but does this ever actually happen? I never met any dude that it seemed to work for and this makes me a lil sad. >>
@Bagelsan: I like it.
Well it was about you.
You should have used “throbbing” it would have made it 100x better.
Molly Ren: I know a kid who says his eyes change colour, but I haven’t noticed it myself. (Not that I’ve really looked)
“Brandon picked himself up off the floor, his head throbbing. ‘What just happened,’ he said.”
Put this is the last post, somewhere: ?
“The Thai hooker was gone, along with his wallet, pants, luggage and dignity. Brandon rubbed his head, images of his crushing defeat slowly sinking in…”
MRAL was sympathetic, “She was 5’10″, I totally could beat her,” he offered.
Totally off topic here, but does this ever actually happen? I never met any dude that it seemed to work for and this makes me a lil sad. >>
It’s sort of true for me - my eyes normally look a muted goldish-greenish-greyish-brownish color, but if I’ve had a good cry anytime in the past day or so, the green comes out much, much more than the other colors, so that my eyes seem to change dramatically into very bright green. It’s actually a consequence of the skin around my eyes being redder than usual, but people notice the increased greenness even when the increased redness is too subtle to see, so I can pretend to have magical fanfiction mood-ring eyes, even if the only moods they convey are “pretty sad” and “everything else.”
Well, at least when Legolas leaves you for Jack Harkness your tragic eyes will look totally bangin’! (Don’t worry; in the next chapter both Batman and Han Solo fall deeply in love with you, and probably Sephiroth too, so you’ll be fine.)
Bagelsan, you just accidentally explained something - the kid I know who reckons his eyes change also tries to make his hair look like Sephiroth!
@Magpie: Oh dear. Does he do martial arts, too? I briefly took Tae Kwon Do with a guy who liked to gel his hair up DragonBallZ style for belt tests… And yes, I was ashamed on behalf of all white people/anime nerds. :p
No, he doesn’t do martial arts, and he was a little bit younger with the Sephiroth thing. He’s discovered Magic now (and the girl who plays it at the game club). He still believes the eye colour thing, though.
Did the guy only gel his hair up for the tests? Not all the time? Dearie me!
“I briefly took Tae Kwon Do with a guy who liked to gel his hair up DragonBallZ style for belt tests… ”
I meet people like this all the time through work. The girl version is just as disconcerting as the boy version.
Well, at least when Legolas leaves you for Jack Harkness your tragic eyes will look totally bangin’! (Don’t worry; in the next chapter both Batman and Han Solo fall deeply in love with you, and probably Sephiroth too, so you’ll be fine.)
Hee. The best part about this is that my boyfriend and I have a running joke about him secretly being Batman. I think I will indeed bounce back quickly if I get to have him AND a young Harrison Ford!
@Pencunim: Taking martial arts doesn’t automatically make you a better fighter. I took co-ed ju-jitsu and every woman was unable to even keep me in holds without me breaking free easily. And this were women who have been training for years. The women in the class couldn’t even trip me nor could they force me into a vulnerable position. They were basically fighting a brick wall. They put more strain and damage on themselves then they inflicted on me. And just to make sure I didn’t end up hurting them, I held back and used only enough force to defeat whatever they were doing (holds, grapples, throws).
Yeah, right.
You are the toughest, strongest, most butch and indefatigable motherfucker to ever stride the earth, and armies step aside lest you get annoyed.
I know the post is old, but I say, what’s the big deal? If women want to do it, I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Only request though, I’d like to see female-only combat units; just out of curiosity. As it is something relatively ‘new’, I’d just want to see how they’d cope, instead of assuming —through a PC mentality— there’d be no difference. I want to see it, and then I’ll nod & smile in total approval.
Have you heard of the Vikings?
Have you heard of the USSR?