Maggie's Farm

Lyudmila Pavlichenko

James: Somebody makes a generalization which is generally true.

The position wasn't a generalization but an absolute: "Except for nurses I do not think women in the military contribute to it's effectiveness." One example is sufficient to contradict an absolute claim.

In WWII, the Soviets had nearly a million women in the military, nearly half in combat roles. They were known by the Germans as tenacious fighters. For earlier historical examples, Rani of Jhansi or Artemisia I of Caria.

While Zheng Yi Sao was a freebooter not a military commander, she was arguably the greatest pirate of all time. She commanded over a thousand ships, rivaling the size of the Imperial naval forces. She personally engaged in combat; firing cannons, leading boarding parties, conducting nighttime raids, and fighting hand-to-hand with sword and pistol. She retired undefeated.

And that doesn't include the contributions of women in non-combat, non-medical roles, such as Grace Hopper, whose computer skills were essential to military readiness.

Pavlichenko punched well above her weight militarily. Person for person, German forces were among the most effective in the world, yet Pavlichenko punched out 300 enemy combatants, including a large number of officers, winning 36 sniper duels. Having responded to "Except for nurses I do not think women in the military contribute to it's effectiveness," let us respond to your other point.

JustMe: At the very least we should bring back the fitness and strength standards of the 1960's and anyone, male or female that passes will be treated exactly the same, i.e. no special treatment, no light duty jobs.

The fitness standard in the Soviet Union in 1941, just like most modern militaries, was tiered by age and gender. Nor did the standards overly depend on raw strength but stressed functional, multi-domain fitness, the goal being combat readiness. Nearly a million women served in the Soviet armed forces during WWII. Clearly, any fitness standard that excluded Pavlichenko would have weakened military effectiveness.

JustMe: Create all female units.

That is not the correct test. The correct test is to compare units made up of the best available people to units which are artificially restricted to recruiting from a subset of available people. Clearly, Pavlichenko should not have been excluded just because of her gender. Her military value was greater than 300 fascists—a fact you keep ignoring.

Little known story: America used to restrict people from all sorts of jobs, including combat roles, because of the color of their skin. This reduced efficiency and effectiveness by not tapping the best available talent, while reducing competitiveness in the white population.