Pentagon to allow Women into frontline combat by 2016

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It's a good - and an interesting point - to discuss. If you ask the folks who look back for 2k years, the most common answer is Christianity, since Paul really ****ed up women when he changed many of the original protocols and traditions in his letters. If you listen to the folks who look back for 5k-10k years, then it's agriculture. I haven't met a single archeologist or a paleontologist who claims that hunter-gatherer tribes were patriarchal, that's just a myth you meet in Internet discussion boards where clueless teenagers think that men hunted mammoths while women collected strawberries. Ie. obviously laughable legends. To me, the most compelling argument is that evolutionary winning strategies where enshrined in tradition and later religion, where they surpassed the reality and thus survived far longer than it was necessary. Definitely the agricultural lifestyle encouraged a more rigid division of labour and societal norms - both of which would be helped by gender-divided spheres of interest/work.
 
To Dodes: At least in Euro-asian society I thought it was more to do with the fact that abrahamic religion, or at least it's interpretation, advocated the subjugation of women due to the Eden kerfuffle.

Women were more predominant in pagan-Roman religious society for example.


And Governments and societies that rule via a leader's physical strength tend to be rather weak and short lived. :???: See the norse tribes and the mongols for an example.  :neutral:
 
Didn't the Mongols leave most of the whole administration thing to the cootie containers while they decided to merrily rape and pillage everything east, south, west and north of them that wasn't separated by a body of water?
 
Dodes said:
Uh, the Norse and Mongols were extremely influential to current-day respective societies.
But not in the way I mentioned...
Seriously, determining the leader of a society based on their physical perfection or military capability alone has always ended in disaster. =/
 
How many modern governments can link itself unbroken to such a society?

(Unbroken meaning...the government wasn't in anyway subverted either by invasion, coup, revolution etc.)

Alexanders greece, the Great Mongolian Empire and the Norse pirates. All were shortlived and weak governments leading to chaos and conversion by superior ideals and governmental foundation.


Edit: Cleanup
 
I never said they were long-term stable societies  :???:

My point was that all these "might makes right" societies influenced us all due to their domination of early civilization.
 
Kobrag said:
How many modern governments can link itself unbroken to such a society?

(Unbroken meaning...the government wasn't in anyway subverted either by invasion, coup, revolution etc.)

Alexanders greece, the Great Mongolian Empire and the Norse pirates. All were shortlived and weak governments leading to chaos and conversion by superior ideals and governmental foundation.


Edit: Cleanup

Yeah, but this begs the question of: what is the oldest continuous government in existence. My first guess would be the Vatican which is probably about 1500 years old? I suppose the Swiss govt is pretty old too.

In the pre-modern world, i.e., everything before either 1900 (or 1800 depending on how you want to define "modern") sovereigns that _lacked_ a strong military ability seem from my anecdotal view to have been more short-lived than those with strong military ability.
 
Trevty said:
ejnomad said:
The Roman Empire fell in 180CE?  The 'Greek Empire' was only from 331-100BCE?  The British Empire only existed from 1700-1950? :???:

180 was the start of the late roman empire and the end of the Era of the Five Good Emperors.

100 Would be about the time of the end of Macedonian pre-eminence.

For 1950, I think he means how they had already reinvented the Commonwealth in 1949 in order to let India remain a republic, overturning the old rule that the British monarch must be head of state in a Commonwealth country.
 
If women are going to be put into front line combat they should probably be separated from the men. Females should be put in female regiments to be kept away from males to prevent intimate relationships from happening. Knowing myself, if I was in the position of being without sexual contact for 8 months, in some middle eastern **** hole, with a few young ladies in my regiment, I would probably at least try to make some moves on them.

There can also be a problem when it comes to male instinct to protect women, I take it very seriously when a man is being violent towards women. I know it sounds very old fashioned and traditional but that is how I was raised and I am sure that other men feel the same way, especially military men who often have traditional values like myself.
 
Trevty said:
For the latter two, I would argue their start dates, not their end dates.  The Roman Empire didn't stop being an empire after 180CE though.  It continued to exist for at least about 400 years more, and it's really closer to a thousand if you count the eastern empire (which you really should).

I stronger than anyone would agree the Eastern is a continuation of the Western Empire, and it didn't stop being an empire but it wasn't the same exact empire administration and that's really his point. The fact it had to be broke into an East and West Empire only proves his point.

I'm not saying I agree with it. I think giving a live span to states may be a bit too subjective, but I see where it's coming from.
 
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