naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
The role of female soldiers in the IDF has always been somewhere between fascinating and horrifying to me. The below post by @CrashedPsychonaut mentions that the capture of an IDF garrison near the border fence involved a number of hapless young female soldiers, isolated at their posts and overrun. I imagine that some of these women were shot and killed, and I presume that others surrendered and were rounded up as hostages; the subsequent fate of these women is very distressing to imagine.
Some quick Googling indicates that approximately 40% of the IDF’s conscript soldiers were female as of 2021, comprising 25% of officers and 18% of combat soldiers. The latter two numbers, and especially the last one, are shockingly high to me. I had been under the impression that the IDF’s female conscripts were overwhelmingly shunted away into positions where a whole lot of things would need to go very unexpectedly wrong before there was any significant chance of them facing real combat. And, to be fair, it seems like in the case of that garrison, a whole lot of things did go very unexpectedly wrong. Still, it’s insane to me that a country with such overwhelmingly security concerns and so many threats surrounding it would put literally any important responsibility in the hands of female soldiers.
I’ve always been under the vague impression that the IDF’s inclusion of so many female soldiers was mostly a PR ploy; filling their ranks with photogenic young women makes people more likely to feel positively-inclined and prescribe towards it. It also allows them to circulate photos of busty women in camo wielding large guns, an archetype which seems to have significant (and, to me, inexplicable) appeal to a certain segment of the American mainstream right. The thought that these smiling young women could actually be sent to the front lines to do hand-to-hand urban combat against battle-hardened men is both inconceivable and appalling to me. I would expect most of them to surrender almost immediately if confronted with life-threatening combat situations. The impact on IDF morale of having a substantial number of its female soldiers captured or killed seems like it would be catastrophic, to say nothing of its practical strategic effects.
Can anyone offer more insight into the role of women in the IDF, and specifically their role in actual combat operations? Both historically and in terms of what we can expect to see in whatever upcoming operations are going to take place as a result of the current crisis?
I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
As for me, though I applaud the IDF’s efforts, I don’t think 18% (and corresponding casualties – though they are not corresponding at present) is quite cutting it, politically speaking. Women’s voting rights, all voting rights (like those of pacifists), should be curtailed to the group's casualty/combat proportion, ie, 18% would mean they get less than a quarter the voting power of a man. Political power ultimately derives from the barrel of a gun. One man, one gun, one pint of blood, one vote. We in the west, by and large living on “strategic islands”, can afford to ignore that reality, but israel cannot carry freeloaders indefinitely.
I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
¿Por qué no los dos?
Look, I’ve never served in the military and never seen combat. I’ve never watched anybody die. I’ve never even been in a fistfight. It’s possible that my intuitions around this issue are totally miscalibrated.
But yes, it does seem very likely to me that the modal female soldier is substantially less effective in close combat than the modal male soldier is. There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women. Testosterone levels alone would seem incredibly relevant to one’s performance in a fast-moving and harrowing scenario in which a combination of violent aggression, mental clarity under pressure, and quick and decisive reactions are required.
I’m not suggesting that women are useless, but simply that their usefulness in combat is considerably outweighed by the importance of their survival as future bearers of children. And also, as I mentioned, it seems that combat morale and unit cohesion are impacted significantly and negatively by the presence of women, at least according to studies that have been published. Again, the idea of large numbers of young women being put in direct harm’s way and then being captured to later be raped or tortured is utterly appalling to me, and would seem likely to have a significant mental effect on IDF soldiers in a way over and above the effect of a similar number of male soldiers being captured or killed.
There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women.
I am not a soldier. But I am on the far end of the distribution for ‘ability to deal with killing’. I’m not a psychopath, I don’t like slaughtering animals though nor do I find it burdensome, but there is a surprising number of full grown men- and an unsurprisingly huge number of women- who can’t directly kill a complex mammal. I have watched full grown and not effeminate men have crying fits over slaughtering lambs and hogs; talked to toughened older men with no shortage of trauma who recounted near tears in their eyes that, working at the slaughterhouse when younger, they insisted on moving from the kill side to the cut side because killing cattle was too difficult to deal with psychologically.
And the biggest correlate of the ability to just put a gun up against an animal’s head, pull the trigger now it’s dead, eat it for dinner or send it to the freezer, is having a beard along your whole jawline. I presume this has something to do with testosterone. And obviously people aren’t animals, I hope I never have to find out whether I can kill a person without flinching. But regardless, ‘difficulty with killing an animal in a calm, cold way’ is probably very strongly correlated with ‘inability to kill your enemies without panicking and doing stupid things out of instinct’. And I suspect the distribution between the two sexes is such that 99.8% of humans with the latter ability are male.
I think you need to differentiate killing humans versus killing animals. I think it's common for people to be more disturbed by videos of animal cruelty than even the most gruesome tortures and executions of human beings. I wouldn't assume that someone who has difficulty killing an animal would have difficulty killing a person that they felt justified in killing.
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Notes -
The role of female soldiers in the IDF has always been somewhere between fascinating and horrifying to me. The below post by @CrashedPsychonaut mentions that the capture of an IDF garrison near the border fence involved a number of hapless young female soldiers, isolated at their posts and overrun. I imagine that some of these women were shot and killed, and I presume that others surrendered and were rounded up as hostages; the subsequent fate of these women is very distressing to imagine.
Some quick Googling indicates that approximately 40% of the IDF’s conscript soldiers were female as of 2021, comprising 25% of officers and 18% of combat soldiers. The latter two numbers, and especially the last one, are shockingly high to me. I had been under the impression that the IDF’s female conscripts were overwhelmingly shunted away into positions where a whole lot of things would need to go very unexpectedly wrong before there was any significant chance of them facing real combat. And, to be fair, it seems like in the case of that garrison, a whole lot of things did go very unexpectedly wrong. Still, it’s insane to me that a country with such overwhelmingly security concerns and so many threats surrounding it would put literally any important responsibility in the hands of female soldiers.
I’ve always been under the vague impression that the IDF’s inclusion of so many female soldiers was mostly a PR ploy; filling their ranks with photogenic young women makes people more likely to feel positively-inclined and prescribe towards it. It also allows them to circulate photos of busty women in camo wielding large guns, an archetype which seems to have significant (and, to me, inexplicable) appeal to a certain segment of the American mainstream right. The thought that these smiling young women could actually be sent to the front lines to do hand-to-hand urban combat against battle-hardened men is both inconceivable and appalling to me. I would expect most of them to surrender almost immediately if confronted with life-threatening combat situations. The impact on IDF morale of having a substantial number of its female soldiers captured or killed seems like it would be catastrophic, to say nothing of its practical strategic effects.
Can anyone offer more insight into the role of women in the IDF, and specifically their role in actual combat operations? Both historically and in terms of what we can expect to see in whatever upcoming operations are going to take place as a result of the current crisis?
I can’t tell if your main objection is that you think they’re completely useless or if it’s a chivalry/”we must protect the eggs” thing. Every ‘defense’ of women on that subject straddles that line. Do you have any reason to assume male soldiers would have been more effective in the towers?
As for me, though I applaud the IDF’s efforts, I don’t think 18% (and corresponding casualties – though they are not corresponding at present) is quite cutting it, politically speaking. Women’s voting rights, all voting rights (like those of pacifists), should be curtailed to the group's casualty/combat proportion, ie, 18% would mean they get less than a quarter the voting power of a man. Political power ultimately derives from the barrel of a gun. One man, one gun, one pint of blood, one vote. We in the west, by and large living on “strategic islands”, can afford to ignore that reality, but israel cannot carry freeloaders indefinitely.
¿Por qué no los dos?
Look, I’ve never served in the military and never seen combat. I’ve never watched anybody die. I’ve never even been in a fistfight. It’s possible that my intuitions around this issue are totally miscalibrated.
But yes, it does seem very likely to me that the modal female soldier is substantially less effective in close combat than the modal male soldier is. There are very significant differences in temperament, personality, hormonal distribution, etc., between men and women. Testosterone levels alone would seem incredibly relevant to one’s performance in a fast-moving and harrowing scenario in which a combination of violent aggression, mental clarity under pressure, and quick and decisive reactions are required.
I’m not suggesting that women are useless, but simply that their usefulness in combat is considerably outweighed by the importance of their survival as future bearers of children. And also, as I mentioned, it seems that combat morale and unit cohesion are impacted significantly and negatively by the presence of women, at least according to studies that have been published. Again, the idea of large numbers of young women being put in direct harm’s way and then being captured to later be raped or tortured is utterly appalling to me, and would seem likely to have a significant mental effect on IDF soldiers in a way over and above the effect of a similar number of male soldiers being captured or killed.
I am not a soldier. But I am on the far end of the distribution for ‘ability to deal with killing’. I’m not a psychopath, I don’t like slaughtering animals though nor do I find it burdensome, but there is a surprising number of full grown men- and an unsurprisingly huge number of women- who can’t directly kill a complex mammal. I have watched full grown and not effeminate men have crying fits over slaughtering lambs and hogs; talked to toughened older men with no shortage of trauma who recounted near tears in their eyes that, working at the slaughterhouse when younger, they insisted on moving from the kill side to the cut side because killing cattle was too difficult to deal with psychologically.
And the biggest correlate of the ability to just put a gun up against an animal’s head, pull the trigger now it’s dead, eat it for dinner or send it to the freezer, is having a beard along your whole jawline. I presume this has something to do with testosterone. And obviously people aren’t animals, I hope I never have to find out whether I can kill a person without flinching. But regardless, ‘difficulty with killing an animal in a calm, cold way’ is probably very strongly correlated with ‘inability to kill your enemies without panicking and doing stupid things out of instinct’. And I suspect the distribution between the two sexes is such that 99.8% of humans with the latter ability are male.
I think you need to differentiate killing humans versus killing animals. I think it's common for people to be more disturbed by videos of animal cruelty than even the most gruesome tortures and executions of human beings. I wouldn't assume that someone who has difficulty killing an animal would have difficulty killing a person that they felt justified in killing.
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That is extreme claim, and I doubt that it is true (from proxies like violently abusive women).
1:499 seems way too extreme to me.
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