This is not good probably.

Low brow or realistic? She admits the same. She said it was tiring but once the epidural was in not bad. She’ll be the first to tell anyone she has zero pain threshold and she’s considering another.

I don’t understand why we have to waive an unecessary badge of honor about pain. Does it lessen the achievement because it didn’t hurt as bad as people constantly portray it?

From 2000 and still relevant. http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/eisenman.html

Just because she doesn’t want to (and obviously it’s totally fine not to), doesn’t mean she physically can’t tolerate that pain level. That’s how your argument sounded to me.

No, I was saying that in the epidural era you can’t equate child birth to pain.

That said, she personally has no pain tolerance whatsoever by her own admission. But I’m not trying to say that as any sort of knock against her because I don’t know what that would really matter. But the idea that all women = child birth = higher pain tolerance seems kind of flimsy to me and backwards in its own right.

Agreed with BS, but I’ll take it one step further. If you believe (as I do) that women are less effective (and that’s saying it politely) at actual combat than men are, every single person that depends on the US military to defend their freedom and their way of life should be scared shitless about this.

Watch Saving Private Ryan or Platoon or The Thin Red Line (which are, IMO, the three movies that really best capture the “essence” of war) and tell me that you think the movie would have even been believable if it had platoons full of women instead of men.

Women are smaller than men, and even when compared to men of the same size, they have smaller hearts and lungs and less muscle mass. These three things are kinda important when carrying 50+ pound packs on rugged terrain for several miles. And after you’ve traveled these several miles, you still have to be ready to engage OPFOR (opposing forces).

I hear what you are saying. But you can’t knok out the natural ability of women to tolerate this significant pain levels just because in the last 50 years they got the chance to opt out of it.

Now whether it’s higher pain tolerance then mens’ we’ll find out once men start having babies :slight_smile: Any day now

Ok, the childbirth argument was mostly made for fun, but it still seemed relevant.

I did a Google search on pain research and it seems that more recent research than the stuff I remembered (which was done in the 1980s) suggests that men do indeed have a higher pain tolerance. So I retract that part of the argument.

Personally, I think it’s the beards. Once men started growing beards, their pain tolerance increased on average (yes, I’m being ridiculous for fun).

Or when women pass a kidney stone out of their dingaling.

Women do share the really painful part of that experience. Maybe getting kicked in the nuts would be a better comparison.

Imagine if the olympics put men/women in all the same events. the winners will generally all be men right?

well there you go

Well established that the tails are longer among men than among women in almost all endeavours. Doesn’t mean much on an individual basis.

Women who have gone through labor pains and have passed gallstones claim that the pain levels are similar (though it depends partly on how big the stone is - and perhaps the baby too).

Having passed a gallstone myself once, you would have a hard time convincing me to get pregnant, though alcohol and accidents can sneak up on you.

Someone once told me that childbirth releases a ton of endorphins into the system just after the baby arrives. Part of the goal seems to be to help with bonding with the baby (perhaps so mom doesn’t get angry at it for causing all that pain). The suggestion was as a secondary effect, the Mother can forget how bad labor pains were, which helps propagate the species by ensuring that she’s not too afraid to go through it again. After all, one needs 2.1 births per female just to keep the species population stable, and in ancient history,mwhere many children didn’t make it to adulthood, probably two to three times that number.

It is interesting that we are a species that has so much pain in childbirth. I gather it’s primarily a consequence of the fact that we are only recently bipedal in evolutionary history. If you watch a horse or gazelle give birth, they seem relatively unperturbed. Seems like it would feel like taking an exceptionally satisfying dump. Perhaps chimps would be a better comparison because they have more facial expressions that one might be able to read better, but I’ve never seen any other primates give birth.

What actually causes the pain? Contractions, similar to a dislocated shoulder? Tissue actually tearing?

Just looked up labor pains. Interesting. The baby is not “pushed” out. Who knew…

It depends I guess. If you’re talking about elite units, then I doubt women could even make it into the selection course. Eg, it would be impossible for women to attend the seals course given the standards, so I think the point is moot.

For regular units maybe some resources are wasted, but do you really think a lot of women are going to come in for the hardcore combat units? Plus, I don’t believe that these courses are that expensive (outside of pilots).

My opinion - While I don’t believe women should be in most military units, I don’t think it’s going to be a huge deal either.

Hopefully the experiment will begin better than this one. http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/95/costly-affirmative-action.htm

you guys are kinda ticking me off. I always assumed trepidation about women in special forces units was purely a question of women’s specific hygene issues. I am certainlly not for lowering the physical requirements, but if she can pass them, why not. As far as being able to keep up will her peers, I think there are certainly women who physically can keep up… and even if they are the weak link as far as brute strength goes, women have certain physical attributes which are an advantage to their male counterparts. Women are built for endurance (often winning outright in ultra events). They have superior capacity in survival situations due to endurance and just being a smaller/ more efficient machine in general. Also, lets not forget that combat roles are not purely a function of strength. There’s the markmanship, strategy intelligence, and emotional fortitude that women excel at. You are telling me if Ronda Rousey wanted to become a navy seal… you would be like…nope?

Does this mean women can be drafted?

Yeah. I was going to say that there’s no reason women could well beat out men in Olympic Archery or Riflery (sp?).

I imagine being smaller could be an advantage in certain situations, such as being a harder-to-hit target (a bit tongue in cheek here, but there is a logic)

My point of view lines up with KM’s mostly. I’m not in favor of quotas, but if they can pass, they should not be denied the opportunity to be a candidate.

I’be heard that George Patton was a champion pentathlete at West Point. The one thing he sucked at, apparently, was shooting. Just a trivia bit.

Credibility crushed.