Re: [semi OT] Women wargamers -longish

 ---- laserlight wrote: 
> One significant problem (and one which makes arguing from fiction
highly
> unreliable) is that men and women have different psychological
makeups.

all sentient entities have differnt psychological makeups. the mean
makeup of men and the mean makeup of women are different, certainly, but
is the difference much larger than the standard deviation? maybe, on
average, women make worse soldiers, but that does not mean that a large
proportion of women would not make good soldiers. just as not all men
make good soldiers.

> (Disagree? So why did _Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus_ sell
so
> well?)

possibly for the same reason all those 'give up smoking with the help of
the egyptian gods' and 'find your ideal mate through astrology' books
sell so well. Anderson's first law: 80% of the people have 20% of the
intelligence.

>  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.

ok, if you were in combat with me (perish the thought), would you know
what i would do next? no (well, yes: i'd run away, but that's not
important right now). the reason you do not know how women fight is
because you have not trained or fought with any women.

Tom

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