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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28011 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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Uh, doesn't Ukraine put women in combat?

Frontline duty is 100% voluntary for women, while men are both drafted and assigned to the frontlines.

Even if you had complete equality in the draft, sending women to the frontline would be poor practice for the same reason that sending 50 year old men to the frontline in a total mobilization scenario would be poor practice, or for the same reason that you wouldn't train people with terrible eyesight to be pilots if you had the choice.

Not even as FPV drone pilots? I know my wife gets seasick when I show her J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's cooking videos, but surely not every woman's vestibular system is this underdeveloped.

Any skill requiring 3-demensional thinking and hand-eye coordination favors men. Video games and chess have proven this beyond all doubt.

I can't comment on the viability of women as drone pilots in the absence of men, but if you have men available you would obviously want them as a first option.

Beyond all doubt you say. What studies would you pull out if people demand evidence?

Studies are lower quality evidence, than the combned scoreboards of every competition involving those skills, in their entire recorded history.

But the feminists won't accept that. They'll point to the much lowers numbers of girls and women in chess and pro gaming. Or "systemic mysogyny" or some such. Less funding, less interest.

The highest ranking female chess player ever, Judit Polgar, is ranked 61st overall. There aren't any other females in the top 100. It beggars belief that mere implicit discrimination would be enough to turn the game so strongly against females at the highest levels., but I don't expect feminists to understand what something not even passing the smell test means. If there was actual explicit discrimination and rules barring women from joining they might have a point.

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They might, if you tell them a trans woman wants to join their darts championship.

But otherwise, so what? For any question you'll find a person taking the other side of the debate, but an honest investigation of this particular question does leave basically no doubt.

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There's a >1 SD difference in shape rotation skills between the average woman and the average man. This is half as strong an effect as the male/female height difference in SD terms.

I saw propaganda around that recently, I didn't really take it that seriously - just thought it was part of the same desperation causing them to look for men. Because, if you're going to use women as combat troops, it seems deeply unwise to let half your manpower go.

What percent of Ukrainian front line troops are women?

Good luck finding a real answer to that question. BBC claims 5,000 but that's almost certainly an egregious lie. My guess is that the real answer rounds to zero.

I'm willing to change my estimate if you can find a single story of a woman killed while storming enemy lines.

The UKR army is like 800k strong which translates to roughly 225k troops on the front.

Given ukraines manpower problems having 2% of your frontliners be women might be reasonable. After all while a 23 year old man is probably better than almost any 23 year old women a 23 year old women might outperform a 45 year old man.

2% is fairly low. Frontline troops can mean Artillery gunners, FPV drone user ect, there are so many different combat roles in the military that they can find the least bad role for women to save more men for the infantrymen.

a 23 year old women might outperform a 45 year old man.

I take it you don't play co-ed sports. It might be worth an effort post, but there are lots of reasons why men are better than woman at combat that even this age gap wouldn't come close to erasing.

2% is fairly low. Frontline troops can mean Artillery gunners, FPV drone user ect, there are so many different combat roles in the military that they can find the least bad role for women to save more men for the infantrymen.

I suspect that this is where the 5,000 number comes from. But if women are being used on the "frontline" to save men for the actual frontline then "frontline" is a pretty meaningless term.

I play co-ed hobbyist sports but nothing professional. A women who lifts takes creatine and can do Frontflips can be more athletic than 20% of men aged >40. Obviously this doesn't describe many women but this maybe describes the top 1% of women which corrisponds to roughly 100% of women on the real front lines.

I suspect that this is where the 5,000 number comes from. But if women are being used on the "frontline" to save men for the actual frontline then "frontline" is a pretty meaningless term.

There's a big issue that's hard to mention which is that "frontline" can mean "any combat role where getting shot at is a real concern" (which is why I suspect it's 2% of the UKR army) and "guy in the trenches". What of these roles that I could find on /r/combatfootage would you describe as "the front lines"

  1. artillery gunner who is firing at russians 30km away
  2. driving a tank 1 kilometer away from the enemy?
  3. manning a pillbox shooting a shotgun at incoming drones?
  4. Somebody controlling drones dropping granades?
  5. Manning a helicopter firing rockets?

I suspect the 5k would call all 5 "front line". I would probably exclude 4.

What of these roles that I could find on /r/combatfootage would you describe as "the front lines"

I would define frontline in a similar way to you. Frontline = high risk of death + proximity to enemy forces. Whether a particular role is front line would depend on how many people died doing it, but many of those roles could definitely be considered front line.

In all the footage there is probably only one single clip of a Ukrainian woman storming a trench, three if you count the gender ambiguous blobs being shot at in Azovstal. Fair few of women in CASEVAC doing in-vehicle stabilization, and a few women working counterbattery were killed. These roles are still valued, but they aren't sitting in trenches waiting for the assault.

Doesn't change the fact that others raised, which is female soldiers are better used outside of directly employing violence of action. Keep men killing, thats what they do best. Women can get the teamkill assist.

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