Re: [semi OT] Women wargamers -longish

laserlight spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

 I have known women who were gung-ho types who might have passed all
> the tests to be an individual soldier--but soldiers need to fight as
units,
> not individuals.  I would not want a woman in combat with me, because
I
> don't know what she would do.  With my buddies, I could predict who
would
> do what and what I'd need to cover.
> I don't necessarily see a problem with all-female units, though.

Without being sarcastic, let me address this comment. Men and Women 
may think somewhat differently due to different brain chemistry and 
socialization. But you think that you are that much more expert in 
how men think because you are one or because you've interacted with 
more of them? I'd question that. I think no UNIT is very good as a 
UNIT until the men (or in this case men and women) have worked 
together over a period of time. Whenever you get a new officer, you'd 
be hard pressed to depend on knowing his or her reacitons 'out of the 
box'. You have to work with them to get a feel for which way they 
react to stress situations and how they like to play things.  If you 
can predict what your buddies would do, it would be because you've 
trained with them, been through stress with them, and seen how they 
perform. Put a women in the same mix, give her the same time to adapt 
(assuming single standards for combat), and give you the same time to 
watch how she behaves, and I'm sure you'd have just as good of a feel 
for what she'd do. If you say "I can tell what I guy would do without 
training with him" then you're basing your reactions on some sort of 
probabalistic model which has a pretty good chance of being off the 
mark. Most of the time, people don't even know what THEY will do when 
the sh*t hits the propeller, let alone what OTHERS will do. Until of 
course they've been there. And then they know, and they know how 
their buddies will behave. I don't think sex is real significant in 
that sense. In a way, the advancing of this argument sounds like 'we 
don't want women because we can't predict what they'll do, darn 
strange beasts that they are'. In truth, if you train with them (I 
did during infantry basic), you learn how they'll pull their weight 
(or won't) and whether they'll put up or crack up. They had a tougher 
road in many senses than most of the guys. Some made it, some didn't. 
And by the end, you could predict that they'd react mostly like the 
guys would - something about that 'breaking down of individualism' 
and the 'moulding of a team from the ashes'.  Leads to kind of common 
reactions. 

Tom. 
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Thomas Barclay		     
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