Quote:
|
Originally Posted by The Avon Lady
...overall I believe that men and women working in close quarters, especially in many combat situations, will increase the risk of failure....
|
I would agree, if they're poorly trained. But military training (if it's done right) is supposed to train the responses of human nature out of a recruit. The idea is to turn a person into a fighting machine that doesn't give in to emotional impulses. A well trained soldier should do his job without being distracted by fear or emotion. If he doesn't, then the military has a problem.
If a person is trained to the levels of professionalism that should be demanded by a military organization, sex should be secondary to professionalism. I mean I've worked in civilian life and the professionalism with which I've done my job has never been affected by the presence of women. If you're a professional you do your job despite distractions - that's the definition of professionalism. If we become less competent when surrounded by the opposite sex, that shows either a lack of training or a basic lack of ability.
People who are bothered by such petty considerations as women on the job will be bothered by other things, and if we have a bunch of folks in the military whose competence can be affected merely by the sex of the person next to them, then in my opinion those people don't belong in a professional organization - especially one that involves life or death decisions. That's not political correctness: it's plain common sense.
The other thing is that it just doesn't make much sense to me to bar 50% of your population from a job purely based on what sexual equipment they happen to be carrying around. I mean just think of the military geniuses that may have been prevented from serving purely because of their gender. How many female Caesars or Napoleons has Western civilization ignored simply because of a surge of chemicals that happened (or rather that didn't happen) when they were still a fetus in the womb? It just doesn't make sense to me. A professional organization should be trying to get the job done. It shouldn't be coddling human weaknesses or prejudices. Rather, those weaknesses should be weeded out.