MovieChat Forums > G.I. Jane (1997) Discussion > sad how many people are closed minded.

sad how many people are closed minded.



A bullet, gun, knife, weapons in general do not care or differentiate if your: male, female, gay, straight, child, senior citizin, black, white, or any race. I see no reason why a person regardless of sex, race, etc should matter. I feel if they want to serve let theme, point, blank and period.

If a war were to break out on us grounds I for one would not care who has a weapon as long as they are fighting on my side.

People should be treated as such: the magic word is people.

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I agree with you. That is how it should be. However we live in the real world with imperfect people and things do not always work the way they should ideally.

Men win wars. It is that simple. It has always been that way and will always be that way. For men to be able to win those wars they need to be set up so they can succeed. When it comes to women in combat roles, that is more important than anywhere else. In combat units you have mostly type A personalities, who pride themselves on their machismo. This involves protecting women, children, and those who are weaker. Urgayle's character makes reference to the Israel military and when they men acted in instinctive ways to try and protect women, who were essentially already dead. This compromised the mission. Accomplishing the mission is more important than diversity, feelings, loss of life, etc. It is why we fight.

As sexist as it may be to say, women can be a distraction on the battlefield. These are often some of the toughest, most capable and efficient men in the world so statements like "get over it" do not apply. If it was that simple, they would. Many men, myself included, were raised from a young age to watch out for and protect women. This is a pretty noble trait in civilian world. However it is a liability in combat. A liability that will get you and your teammates killed.

At best the most we will ever see, without horrifically lowering the standards, is 1% of women in Special Operations Force. That means the other 99% are the men. Do you compromise the 99% to accommodate the 1%? Of course not.

I don't care who is fighting beside me. But many men in my unit do care. If those men are not 100% focused on their job, because they are watching out for a woman, I am more likely to not go home to my family.

Some day we may see women in combat roles. It needs to be left up to the military to figure out how to do it. We integrated people of color and we will integrate gays and women too. But we need to be left alone to do it. People who have never served a day in uniform need to stay out of this discussion because it is a world they don't have the first clue about.

Do you really want equality and gender blindness? Start by eliminating the men's and women's divisions in the Olympics. Everybody competes in the same events. To put that in perspective look at the 100M event. The fastest time ever ran by a female is Florence Joyner's 10.49. No woman has ever ran faster than that in all of recorded history. In the 2012 Olympics the slowest men's time to qualify for the medal race was 10.02 (slowest time of those who didn't qualify was 10.31. The fastest woman in all of recorded history not only would have not qualified for the medal race, but would have been dead last in the semi-finals. Actually that is being generous because she wouldn't have even made the US team because the slowest runner they had ran a 10.08 at the Olympics and Team USA's qualifying time was 10.28. The greatest female sprinter in American history wouldn't have even made the 2012 Olympic team. Would this be any different in any other sport? We've never seen a woman in the NFL, NHL, NBA, or MLB for a reason. If you want equality, where we won't be shipping our mistakes home in body bags, then start with sports to see how suitable women are when side by side with the men.

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I get it! You want to be alone with the boys. You want to have them all for yourself, so you are free to do all that ambiguous horseplays we know goes on on locker rooms in sports and the military. You don't want the competition women would pose for the attention of your homeboys, when you're all stationed together during combat.

I'm only partly kidding, I mean... I'm a guy but I haven't been in the military. I actually like and respect what the military does to a guy on a physical level, with all the exercise and training, tactics *beep* and whatnot. But unless you're born rich, you gotta be pretty stupid to go out there and fight rich people's war. Or you've got to be blinded by faith, either in some christian god or in American exceptionalism, to be fighting these wars for ideological reasons.

Before you go all mad calling me an useless hippie, have in mind that my mindset is a direct reaction to all the stupid things the military has done. Barely any war fought on the 20th and 21st century is justifiable on moral grounds - almost all of them only happened out of greed, or because the military just wanted to see who could swing their cocks the hardest. So many wars for stupid reasons has turned most of us, specially civilians, pretty cynical about this supposedly higher moral code you military guys seem to be so proud about.

So all this "testing to the limit", "toughest man on Earth" crap we see in this movie, and so many others, but also coming from military and law enforcement real people we all come across at some point in our lives, all this sounds pretty silly, like grown men playing super-hero versions of themselves, to a lot of people among us - the normals. It's just comic, sounding as vapid as whatever politicians or religious bigots say.

You bring a point about the "seriousness" of combat science, and why women shouldn't be allowed in. You even give a hint of understanding what real progress means, when you say "maybe some day in the future" women will be acting on combat missions. It's funny for me that you can't see the absurdity of the fact that, for you and your notion of future, there will always be war.

You may think you're being realistic and adult about it, but I find it pathetic. War never solved anything, and yet you are unable to consider any alternative to it.

Women wanna get shot while fighting to try to steal an oil field from one of the richest families in the world, only to give it to another of the richest families in the world? Please, be my guest! Let anybody stupid enough to be willing to do that, for whatever reasons, do it! The more, the merrier!

In your minds, you're saving the world from those evil evil stonethrower terrorists. In the minds of most of us, normal people, you and the terrorists are all stupid. I'll still call the police if someone tries to rob my house, but I'll avoid dealing with this military *beep* mindset the most I can.

At least in sports they know it's all about fun and giggles, that it's not actually real. If the best minds we have in the world are athletes and soldiers, no wonder we're on this *beep* we're in. Back on the day when Da Vinci and Galileo were the models for a great human being, that's when we had some evolution going on for mankind. The world of jocks we live in today is quickly sinking down to hell. We have no real purpose as human beings, so we resort to playing war games like if they meant something. They don't. They're good for movies, computer games, and the rare occasion when all hell breaks loose, and society must have some kind of order. All the rest of the time though, you're just wasting our money with your silly toys. And all the money in the world can make you win a single war, not even against cavemen or desert people with 40-years-old AK47s, and I wonder why that is. It's simple - the worst thing that can happen for military people, is for a war to end. Losing or winning, it doesn't matter. As long as there's a war going on, you'll get your fat paychecks anyways. Well, maybe not you, servicemen and women, but definitely the guys making your expensive toys.

Semper fi! Hoo-ya! Aye-aye! Pretty fun! You guys even have your own language, like Avatar or the elves of Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. And you're just as believable or relevant as those fairytales. History will be the judge of all your "bravery" and moral superiority.

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Wow what a rant.

It's really simple mate, nations will attempt to maintain their national security and ensure their overseas interests are secure. Be it by political means or war.

Unless we're talking about terrorists that slaughter people, your typical infantryman is a patriotic and passionate person that for their own reasons has placed themselves in a position where they may be involved in direct combat with men just like them under a different flag.

So choose a side. If you want to ignore the world then be prepared that other nations won't do the same and you will rely on the service of others to maintain the security and freedoms you live under.

It's unfortunate but it is reality.

Regarding women in combat units, it's another simple situation.

Female infantry burn out faster than Male infantry. That's it. Nothing to do with their ability to kill, nothing to do with a male dominate culture, nothing to do with their morale or mental health.

The female body cannot withstand the punishment that an infantryman/woman would be required to endure during sustained combat operations for weeks to months at a time.

Now can you answer why on either a strategic level or tactical level why any current military force would want female soldiers when males are available to do the job for longer? You can't. Politically there is a reason, militarily, no.

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“Men win wars,”

You never read Lysistrata.

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So we should abandon qualifications for everything then?

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Women are quite capable of defending our country. But in combat I would crack before seeing a woman raped.

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