Could it be that one way to restore a sense of honor and purpose in the ADF would be to stop using them as enforcers in America's crusade toward world domination?
Sending young soldiers on night raids does nothing to enhance their sense of self-worth. Ditto for employing them in black sites as interrogators.
The ADF is itself being abused. Small wonder that its individual members abuse.

"Soldier this, and soldier that, and chuck him out, the brute
But its "saviour of the country" when the guns begin to shoot."

What is this compulsive need by people like Mike Bird to be moral puritans and wag their fingers at everybody else?

Soldiers kill people, Mike Bird, and they take casualties doing it. Most men do not want to be soldiers, and those men who do like soldiering, who don't mind getting shot at, and do not turn into psychiatric cases after killing somebody, are a special breed. Perhaps it is you who should be consulting a behavioural psychologist to try and understand how such men think? Judging societies trained killers with attitudes more appropriate to judging child care workers is potty.

The Australian Army could even learn something in that regard from the French Army. The French Army does not even bother recording minor military transgressions by its soldiers. The French Army knows that soldiers are soldiers, and it expects soldiers to get into trouble.

I find your attitude incredible. It is OK to kill people on orders, but you must not harbour sexist thoughts.

This equates to the policy during WW2, where bomber pilots were ordered to remove lurid "girlie" murals on th3 side of their bombers. Dropping bombs on cities full of mainly women and kids was OK, but let's remove the dirty pictures from the mass killing machines. Then there was the Wehrmacht's problem. The German Nazi Party ordered that soldiers under 18 could not have cigarettes in their ration packs, because they were too young to smoke. So they supplied their young killers ration packs with lollies.

Throughout history, the greatest military defeats have occurred where those that ordered soldiers around forgot all about practical military necessity, and became more interested in the military opinions of priests, shamans, astrologers, feminists, and political officers. It seems as if the Australian army is now being "re educated" by political commissars (harassment officers?) like Mike Bird to accept that females have a place on the front line.

Continued.

The last idiot army to do something that stupid was the Chinese Army, which was became so obsessed with the notion of human Equality that it removed all badges of rank. This leaderless rabble, with no visible chain of command, which marched into Vietnam "to teach the Vietnamese a lesson." But it was the conventionally organised Vietnamese army taught the Chinese a lesson about political correctness.

If we are having trouble in the barracks mixing soldiers and women, could I be so bold as to tell you to get the women out of the barracks? This stupid notion of mixing soldiers and women has acheived nothing but endless lurid news stories which would seem to support my premise. Even the Navy is not immune. We put young men and youing women in very close proximity tom one another on a confined vessel for long periods out at sea, and we wonder why the boys keep trying to screw the girls?

Killing people is secret men's business and outside of a genocidal war, women have absolutely no place on the line in a professional army or Navy. If the sort of men who will kill other humans on our behalf have sexist thoughts, well that's just too bad.

Anyone who thinks differently, well, lets put it to the test. The next time that there is a real knock down, drag out war, let us make sure that a battalion composed entirely of females goes into action against an enemy battalion composed entirely of females. Women do not kill women. It is almost unheard of even in criminal murder cases for a female to kill another female.

In a situation where two battalions of women started shooting at each other, the first woman hit would scream and all of the women on both sides would immediately drop everything and run over to help her. All of the women would suffer trauma and anguish, and they would then start agreeing among themselves that it was the fault of men that they had been put in such a position where women were hurting women.

"In a situation where two battalions of women started shooting at each other, the first woman hit would scream and all of the women on both sides would immediately drop everything and run over to help her."

and you base this on what evidence? there are a number of wars going on right now where women on on the front line, so there is a wealth of actual evidense to draw upon.

Chivalry for heavens sake! Lovely concept, & great in fairy stories, but there never was a round table, except in myth.

From my reading of the times of chivalry, being a citizen of a conquered or surrendered city was a pretty dangerous thing.

More women were raped by nights in shining armor, than were saved by them. The real difference was what happened next. Evidently today you photograph the action, & put it on the net. In days of yore once finished, you ran her through with your sword. I guess with no effective contraception back then, this avoided future complication.

From what I'm told there is a great deal of consensually taped amateur sex all over the net. How do they know the perpetrators are army types, I doubt they were wearing a uniform, or is there a site for army sex alone?

Talking about uniforms, how long do you reckon it took one of those nights to get out of his shining armor to be ready for the rape part of rape & pillage, & do you think he had to have a page boy to help.

Oh & which part of the ordeal would have been the most degrading, the rape, the page boy watching, or being run through with the sward afterwards? I would think the latter, but then, what the hell would I know.

Lego, all too true. And this Lecturer in Theology should be reminded how priests , parsons, imams, etc , often worshipping the same god, through the ages, have exhorted soldiers in both trenches to kill the others.

Ask your grandad what he got up to when they went over to Cairo in 1941 and to occupy Japan after the war then ask your Dad what went on in Saigon and ask your son what went on in Phuket last summer.
Chivalry isn't the solution it's the problem, it blinds people to the realities of war and the group dynamic among men who are away from hearth and home,chivalry belongs in Mills and Boon novels, it has no place among fighting men.

It was widely reported that some WW11 soldiers shot over the heads of the "enemy"?
That is until they encountered the death camps and became aware of the mass murder and atrocities committed there.
After that very few shot high, or considered that any of the killing immoral or unjustified.
As one veteran put it, suddenly we knew what we were fighting for and against!
Even so, for some of those soldiers, staving women who could be had for little more than a loaf of bread, were fair game?
And widows, fighting to save what remained of their families, consented!? As do young women drunk to the point, where they have passed out and unaware of what is happening!
Arguably, when a young man is thrown in at the deep end of a war, where it's kill or be killed, the very first thing he loses is the moral compass.
And there is a list of recreational drugs as long as your arm, some legal the rest not, that procure the same effect.
As for improving the moral standards of those we train to be leaders?
Well, if they don't have an unassailable moral code and compass, by the time they are selected, they will never ever grow a REAL one?
Somewhere it is written, give me the boy between 1 and 5, and I will give you the man!
We will no doubt go to war again, against some mass murdering medieval monster?
And we won't ever be able to justify our involvement, if we become that, or worse than that against which we fight!
Chivalry? Why not!
But it must be a rusted on part of your personalty, well before you sign up to a warriors code, or take a sacred oath of duty.
I believe what's missing is a bona fide profiling, that would eliminate these counterfeit posers, before they defile the good name, or the sacrifice of all those, who gave everything, so we might all live free!
Rhrosty.

I love the way that women have been completely left out of the equation here (except of course for Lego's long-winded diatribe about their complete and utter incompetence in all things military).

This is all about men pontificating with one another about the rights and wrongs of rape in war zones.

Hello-oh? Look beyond yourselves, guys.

There's one or more women in all these scenarios undergoing the most horrific experience that could possibly be inflicted on any human being - i.e. being at the total mercy of one or more over-armed, battle-hyped ubermales, freaked-out on testosterone and evil-enemy propaganda, who has probably just killed or is about to kill her family and she will probably follow once they've done with her.

What we need is NOT a code of chivalry or, worse, a dumb set of rules on harrassment or yet another course on sensitivity training. The reason men rape women in war is because they are the ones with the guns (and swords). This situation has evolved because, over the millenia, men have systemically excluded women from all forms of physical and armed combat. The biggest irony for women is that this leaves them defenceless and in need of 'protection' by men - read 'rapable'.

The only way to stop war rape is for women to have the same access to the world's weaponry that men have.

Hi there Mr Bird...

Indeed, of course our soldiers should have a sense of chivalry, you're perfectly correct ! I'd go further in fact, I'd place a general prohibition on the use of any intemperate or crude language also. I firmly believe, bad language of any kind, tends to debase and shame any young chap, who seeks a career in our Defence forces, don't you think ?

Another way of ensuring our soldiers, sailors, and air folk act in a more gentlemanly and chivalrous way, would be to recruit many more ladies, I do mean ladies into the Service. Not some of the 'rougher', more 'pugnacious' young girls one sees out and about, adorned in crude tattoo's and other metallic body piercings. Particularly into the more senior levels of the armed forces. And in so doing, it would introduce to our younger chaps a much higher standard of personal behaviour in which for them to emulate as they progress through their military careers. It could well prove to be a splendid outcome, I should think !

Further, I also think their uniforms leave a lot to be desired. We rely too much on force, and not nearly enough on negotiation. It is thought that many of the wars in the future will NOT be settled with weapons, rather by skilled negotiation. A uniform made of camouflage material, with all the badges, and pouches, and many pockets, does tend to make one's potential enemy quite nervous ? And that would be the last thing you'd want ?

In fact, ALL uniforms should be designed and made by ladies, without resorting to all this frightening, agressive design, and camouflage material !

As an example; For the Army - perhaps a soft fawn coloured material ? For the Navy - of course an 'off white' material with a protective sun hat, would be ideal ? And for the Air folk - a nice soft 'sky blue' material would be very fitting for them ?

Only suggestions of course ?

So a battalion of women facing another battalion of women would mean both sides would down arms with the first casualty.
And what part of that is not good idea?

It is not surprising that with a media that finds sex and sportsmen and soldiers great fodder for a dumbed down audience, that the same audience comes to think that sex offences abound in the said areas of interest. Also, that men are 'all after the one thing' and take liberties to get 'it'.

Of course with a PM and ministry who are forever playing the gender card (and class [warfare] card and xenophobia card) the misleading impressions are encouraged.

The definition of sex offence has been broadened too to include what has always been quite normal behaviour for the men, and yes the women too, of lower sociopolitical Oz. On top of that is the known but often denied preference of women for 'bad boys' and women's hatred of bad boys for behaving just the way that attracts women, but not being sorry and displaying 'commitment' afterwards. Bad boys are men and men are supposed to be thankful and malleable after being shown the rabbit as it were. But bad boys like bad girls (and there are many bad girls too, although it is not politically correct to say so) do not reform. Surprised by that, anyone?

That is not to say that there are no sex offences. But the subject is vastly overblown and to serve the need for an audience, or for a raison d'etre by careerists in the victim industry.

It really comes down to how the not so genteel men and women who make up the numbers at the footy, in defence forces, or at the pub chasing after buff men and women in uniform behave. Remember too that while bad boys and bad girls abound at the lower socioeconomic end of society, there are not unknown well up the line either.

Killarney men shouldn't be in the armed forces either, a standing army is an outdated concept and we are now seeing things return to the way they were before the Peace Of Westphalia. Soldiers should only be hired as and when they are needed and only for one reason, to kill the enemies of their paymasters. You'd have heard the stories from the rape of Germany in WW2, the front line troops of the Soviet Shock Armies and Tank divisions behaved well toward civilians but they warned German women to flee because the rear echelon troops, the clerks, drivers, military police and such were from a very low element and would rape, torture and kill them once the front had moved forward.
Halduell,
The female Soviet soldiers and military Police were accused of goading their male comrades into abusing German women and of turning their backs on the victims as they screamed for mercy. I disagree with that comment about female soldiers, women are just as likely to abuse people under their control and commit atrocities in war, have we all forgotten the Abu Ghraib scandal? Read up on the Draft Riots in New York in the 1860's and learn about what the female rioters did to the Englishmen and Negroes who were unfortunate enough to be caught by the mob.

There exists in almost all creatures on planet Earth a natural, powerful, instinctive inhibition against killing, or even seriously injuring members of one's own species. Defence of territory involves the driving away of the competitor, not their deaths. Defence of territory is the job of the males in almost all species, that is why males are usually bigger and much more violent than females. 95-97% of prison inmates are males.

Military commanders have known for thousands of years that most men will not kill or even seriously injure the enemy, unless put under ruthless discipline, are under the effects of behaviour inhibiting drugs, are in a high state of anger, or are directly defending their loved ones. And if they do kill the enemy, they are likely to commit suicide to assuage their guilt. Police officers who are forced to kill offenders must submit to mandatory grief counselling for this reason.

The stresses involved with killing other humans face to face, is mitigated in modern armies where crew served weapons fire very lethal projectiles at a distant enemy, and the crew is unaware of the direct effects of their weapon. It is the infantrymen of every army who do the face to face killing, and who take most of the casualties doing it. Every war involving the large scale use of infantry in modern times has seen a wave of suicides from returned infantrymen.

62,000 US soldiers were killed in Vietnam. Twenty years later, 100,000 returned vets had committed suicide.

It has been estimated that less than 10% of males can kill the enemy and not be psychologically affected by it. This is why elite infantry units comprising a very disproportionately high number of these natural born killers routinely put to flight armies much larger then themselves. In large conscript armies, the 90% of men who do not want to fight get in the way of the 10% that do. Diluting this mix with women is a recipe for military catastrophe. Kenny thinks that women can do a job that 90% of males are psychologically unequipped to do.

That most people are unaware that most men will not kill the enemy is not surprising, given the cultural conditioning of western people today by the entertainment media. Boys brought up in a diet of cowboys and indians, or war movies, where the hero and his sidekicks casually blow away their enemies en masse, results in attitudes where most people think that anyone can do it.

The only movie that showed that some people can not kill, and that they suffer from overwhelming guilt if they do, was the western 'Unforgiven" by Clint Eastwood.

The manpower short Israeli Army uses large numbers of young women in usually sexually segregated rear areas, not in elite assault units. Their experience of women in battle revealed another survival instinct of males. If a woman on the front line was hit, every man around her would disobey orders, stop fighting and go to her aid. Such instinctive "chivalrous" male attitudes to protect their women at all costs are perfectly natural and admirable, but have no place on a battlefield and are contrary to good order and discipline.

The Israeli knowledge of what usually happens to captured male and female Jews, may make their more liberal attitudes to female soldiers more understandable, as both go into the gas chambers together.

There are only one group of men qualified to answer the question as to whether males and females should fight together in an army. They are the senior NCO's and front line officers who have been in combat and been shot at. Such men have made their opinions known in "letters to the editor" sections of newspapers and they have unanimously agreed that mixing the sexes in a real war, is a very bad idea.

If you want to lose the next war, then ignore the advice of your own front line soldiers and listen to the military opinions of feminists and sexual discrimination councillors instead. As Colonel Chuck Yaeger once quipped. "Stupid people start wars and stupid people run wars, and very rarely do they ever listen to the people who fight wars."

Killarney,

"The only way to stop war rape is for women to have to same access to weaponry that men have.

I think you'll find that human's are rather a brutish species once the veneer of civilisation and peaceful organised community is lifted. Arming women only further exacerbates the degeneration.

Every time humanity gives in to its penchant for human to human brutality and barbarity, it waves goodbye to any semblance of civilised behaviour.

Nature is cruel and dismissive, and humans out to slaughter each other is nature at its rawest, even though we as a clever species, introduce tactics and strategy to fool ourselves that we're not indulging in the basest of carnal behaviour.

Civilised life, as I mentioned, is merely the veneer that we are forced to strenuously uphold. War is a return to brutishness - yet is very much part of who we are.

We have to live with our contradictory selves - who can fly to the moon, and deliver outrageous opulence, construct magnificent architecture and pour out sublime prose..... yet who so easily descends into depraved savagery whenever territory or resources are threatened.

I don't believe that arming women will change any of that.

To Poirot.

You have just committed an act of racism by prejudging the entire human race and labelling us all with the negative stereotype of "a brutish species."

Thank you for proving to Lexi that everyone is racist, everyone prejudges entire groups of people, and everybody stereotypes.

You know it is funny, Poirot. You and all of the rest of your evangelical social crusading caste are so convinced of your own moral superiority, that you are unaware that you routinely violate the very principles that you claim are absolute. It is this inability that people like you have to never recognise the contradictions in your own ideology which makes you people so interesting. You seem to need simple, single answer solutions to the most complex of problems and you think you can end all human conflict if "racist"and "sexist" discriminators simply stopped "oppressing" their "victims."

Every human conflict can be made to fit this formulae with a bit of judicious pushing and shoving of the facts. The formulae seems to be.

1. White people are always wrong, and dark skinned people are always right.

2. Anything that goes wrong in a darker skinned people’s society is always the fault of white people.

3. Not only are white people always wrong, they are especially wrong if they are Americans.

4. Whatever injustices occur in white society must be pointed out and savagely attacked, but if darker skinned societies are riven with the foulest injustices and human rights violations, it is impolite to point these out.

5. The cultures of dark skinned people must be protected, while the cultures of white Prots must be destroyed.

6. White people are always the oppressors, and dark skinned people are always the victims.

Poirot every carnivore on earth kills. The honest ones kill what they are going to eat themselves. Others like so many humans pretend they would never kill, while tucking into a stake or sausage.

Probably the main thing wrong with this modern civilization is that it has allowed too many people to get too far away from real nature & real life.

If every man, & to an even greater extent, every woman, had to chop the head off the chook, then pluck it themselves, the stupidity we see, particularly in inner city elites would reduce greatly.

Hell, even if they had to dig the earth & grow their own vegetables, a more practical outlook on life would result. They might start to see the earth as something to provide sustenance, rather than something to worship.

What utter garbage Killarney, men in most urbanized societies, have no more weapons than women, & know no more about using them. They aren't making pretty little pearl handled pistols to go in mens handbags you know.

From what we see every day, it is do-gooder parole board members who are much more dangerous to women than most men, & we never punish them for their continual stupidity.

I dunno HASBEEN, I think it now prudent that you and I should get with the times ! I've seen the light, so should you ? No longer should we remain in the shadow of a totally masculine Military, it should, and must be opened right up to allow females to join any unit they wish ? We should no longer try to retain hold of this masculine notion of a military force only for men ! Yes mate, I have lost my 'marbles', completely ! :)

Hasbeen,

I agree...we live a sanitised life in the West, for the most part, the gore of life is cordoned off.

Women in the West, of course, do experience their condition as a mammal on the earth, especially with childbirth - and so do men in myriad ways, but where it can be rendered less corporeal and more sterile, it will be.

The more nature - and our own carnal condition - can be kept at bay, the more we are comfortable, both psychologically and materially.

But our primal nature does burst through, especially during war....or in social situations where too much freedom takes hold. We need the edifice of social convention and order - (and even religion serves a purpose here) to keep the primal urges at bay.

I think men have evolved to protect and to quest - and all they have managed to construct in our world was in response to fleeing from the jaws of nature. They couldn't do it without women, yet they've probably done it also partly as a response to women and a feminine tie with nature.

Btw, I know many families and in the overwhelming majority of them, the females wear the pants at home.....why is that?

.................

LEGO,

I half-read, half-didn't-read your rant.

I think you're on the wrong thread - or does your repertoire only consist of one subject.

(I can't be bothered responding to the same twaddle ad nauseam)

Poirot

‘I think you'll find that human's are rather a brutish species once the veneer of civilisation and peaceful organised community is lifted.’

Yes and no. It’s civilization itself that creates brutishness, using a system of official violence to maintain its hierarchical structure. When civilisation collapses – either totally, or temporarily following a disaster – a population conditioned to always defer to authority, panics and overreacts.

While I have no real proof, I believe that the default human psyche leans toward self-reliance, compassion and cooperation, not brutishness. Humans evolved to defer to violence and intimidation only when they come under threat. The rise of civilization turned this on its head and made violence and intimidation the default reaction to everything.

Unless a cataclysm massively decreases our numbers and reverts us to a tribal lifestyle, I don’t think this can be reversed through things like disarmament and mass sensitising.

‘I don't believe that arming women will change any of that.’

Humans have always been armed. It’s not the arms themselves that cause all the brutality but disproportionality of force.

Women have been systematically excluded from their natural right to train themselves for physical and armed combat/defence – thus leaving them weak and powerless. (A lot of men, too, but for different reasons.) In this sense, LEGO is correct. But where he views this as innate female weakness, I see it as social conditioning.

Poirot, "I know many families and in the overwhelming majority of them, the females wear the pants at home.....why is that?"

It would be the rare Australian home where the woman does not wear the pants. The men might earn, but almost all of the spending is controlled and done by women. Any suggestion of a change to that would be taken as a declaration of war in most households. It wouldn't be M'Lady who waves the white flag either. I am damned sure that where the woman is the main breadwinner she would still control and do most of the expenditure.

Killarney, "Women have been systematically excluded from their natural right to train themselves for physical and armed combat/defence – thus leaving them weak and powerless"

The very proud Australian Women's (non-medical) Army formed 1941 was disbanded. There are women who would serve if they could again be under women officers in their own Service. Would feminists be happy with that though?

My mother, grandmothers and the family women before were all armed in their own homes. They all had their .22 or .410(shotshells) to see four-legged and for that matter, two-legged nuisances off the property and no-one ever thought anything odd about that. Contrary what to modern hysterics might believe, that did not result in hundreds of murders, mass homicide and accidents.

The story of how women 'won the West' in Australia, the frontierwomen to extend the US image, is rarely told and very rarely recognised. That is not the doing of 'men'. That is the doing of middle class feminist ratbags and interests preserving their victim status, or the careers that the victim industry guarantees. There is the odd museum exhibition, say of midwifery tools and potions, that gives us some view into what life was like.

Much Australian history has been re-written over recent decades. Even since there was money from the Guvvy trough from claiming victim status.

So true onthebeach, I can remember seeing my father, & my mates fathers in the 40s & 50s, come home & hand their unopened pay packet, [in those days when we still used money instead of credit] to the little lady, & have his pocket money doled out to him by her. Men have always been too generous for their own good.

Handling weapons is more a matter of desire I have found. My lady can take out a match box at 10 meters with the 22 every time, but has never shown any interest at gathering food with the thing, where as my shotgun never fired a shot without supplying something for the table, even if only a hand of coconuts brought down with a solid.

Our average cave woman was somewhat smarter than Killarney. They knew that hunting mammoth was hard & dangerous work, particularly with a couple of kids slung over your back. They had enough sense to stay near the cave gathering roots & berries, cooking the hunters prize, if any, & doing the dishes, rather than wear themselves out on wild goose chases.

Lets face it, most women would rather get their fish fresh out of the fish shop, nicely wrapped of course, rather than still kicking out of the ocean.

Then of course they make such a song & dance with what they do. I've seen this child birth thing, [on TV], & apart from being rather messy & noisy, how hard can it be. I reckon they may be pulling a bit of a con there, & know they can get away with it, because we can't check it out. If it is as tough as they'd have us believe, why do they keep doing it with a second, third & so on?

When you think about it, they must be lying, stupid, or cunning, & my money is on the cunning.

Killarney,

My reference to "brutish" is really only applicable when "society" (of whatever kind) fails, or where we're confronted with the raw corporeality of our condition.

I agree that in a well-ordered community, be it tribal or industrial, the onus is on cooperation.

In a tribal society, you'll find that members cleave to fairly rigid gender roles. You'll find that women stage the whole domestic show, from looking after children, to crafting essential items, to growing or gathering much of the food, preserving, preparing and cooking it. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to range away from the settlement for protein, and to be on hand to protect the tribe from incursion. (Btw, I'm assuming in the event of invasion that the women would be comforting, hiding and protecting the children, while the men would be engaging in actual armed combat)

I'm somewhat surprised that you criticise "civilisation" for maintaining that structure, yet lauding the "cooperation" inherent in a traditional lifestyle.

A traditional or tribal lifestyle would see a woman doing things that many feminists deride as "women's work" A traditional lifestyle is one where women are valued and value themselves for their prowess in driving domestic harmony - keeping the village smoothly oiled and running sweet, so to speak.

In fact, a co-operative, compassionate traditional lifestyle rests on the bedrock of both men and women conforming to rigid gender roles. That this arrangement was preserved down through the centuries is hardy surprising. It's only in technologically advanced, modern industrial society that the lines have been blurred and women have moved into areas traditionally occupied by men.

My question is why do feminists appear so unhappy with the present state of affairs when they've sought to make gender roles an androgynous concept?...when people like you laud traditional society where gender roles are/were much more rigid?

Poirot

‘I agree that in a well-ordered community, be it tribal or industrial, the onus is on cooperation.’

It’s nice that you agree with me. Pity that’s not what I said.

I meant basic human nature being cooperative in the egalitarian sense. I was not using the term ‘cooperation’ as a basis for how communities are ‘ordered’. Cooperation can also be used – and often is – to maintain exploitive hierarchies and to perform acts of appalling brutishness.

As for all your comments re tribal societies and men’s and women’s work, I’ve long since tossed out all that macho-anthropology stuff that evolved out of 19th century male-only academies. A lot has been discredited, but the myths persist.

According to a thousand prehistoric-‘man’ documentaries – men spent their lives romping over the plains stalking long-extinct mammoths, sharpening spears and bonding around campfires away from petty female domesticity. And women happily spent their lives confined to the hut, out of sight of camera crews, venturing outside only occasionally to pick up the nuts and berries that obligingly grew close to the hut so their frail little legs didn’t have to walk far.

‘It's only in technologically advanced, modern industrial society that the lines have been blurred and women have moved into areas traditionally occupied by men.’

Excavations of pre-‘civilisation’ sites from Anatolia, Minoan Crete and Old Europe indicate otherwise. Gender roles were fluid and women participated as much as men in public life. Not surprisingly, military warfare and class either didn’t exist or were minimal.

Killarney, you've read too much Rousseau. The claim that humans deep down are 'good' and then only corrupted by society is a myth perpetuated by Rousseau. All you've done is exchange one myth for another.

Please yourself, Killarney.

If you want to believe that women in pre-civilisation tucked the tiddlywinks under their wings and accompanied their menfolks on their expeditions, then so be it.

I'm fascinated by the way you dismiss women's valuable work as them having ".....spent their lives confined to the hut.....venturing outside occasionally to pick up the nuts and berries that obligingly grew close to the hut so their frail little legs didn't have to walk far."

Why is it that dyed-in-the-wool feminists devalue women's contribution in traditional society?

My next question is why feminists believe that women who did stay closer to the hearth would have had no role in the pubic life of a traditional or tribal community?

Women and their contributions were central to those communities.

Those women knew that.

So did the men.

I'm fascinated that the only values you can bring yourself to extol regarding women in traditional society are those that (you imagine) emulate the men.

It seems to me that true feminists won't or can't handle the fact that women are nurturers by nature. And that nature requires a settled home base to raise human children who are dependent for so much longer than other mammals.

Rampaging over the countryside in league with men, hunting or fighting, isn't conducive to bringing up junior at all.

http://www.academia.edu/408392/Evidence_for_Warfare_on_Crete_during_the_Early_and_Middle_Bronze_Age

Killarney, you really should do this professionally. Your talent for satire is prodigious.

Poirot, you're right, of course. Humans self-organise at every level and the most fundamental level is that of the pair-bond. It has taken 50 years of aggressive feminist propagandising, (as so aptly lampooned by Killarney) backed by large amounts of corporate and government support and subsidy to break the pair-bond as the primary organisational unit and I give it only another 20-40 to return to dominance.

On the subject of militarism and "chivalry", the quid pro quo for the soldier has always been the availability of women. A man returning from a war is in a privileged position, with many of his competitors for female attention no longer around and a grateful population of women to compete for his attention. My mother had 3 "maiden aunts" who never married after losing their fiances in WW1, but who served as helpmeets for their sisters and brother in raising their families.

We are trying to pretend that being a soldier is a "profession" and to give its practitioners the same "progressive" attitudes that are common in some civilian sectors, which are based on a narcissistic drive to self-perceive as "good" and to fit in with a group that is dominated by women. Soldiers KNOW they're good. They're so good they're prepared to die for those women. They have no need for posturing and the women they attract don't either.

There aren't too many poseurs in a platoon of infantry. It's a shame that the top brass seems to have forgotten, or perhaps never learnt, what it means to be a genuinely competent man doing man's work.

They should be disciplining internally and telling everybody else to just go away. The "whistleblowers" should be summarily dismissed. They are dingos who'll "walk beside you for miles then turn on you when you need them".

While there are some men and doubtless women too whose behaviour could bring the military into disrepute, their numbers are low compared with the large numbers of servicemen and servicewomen. We really have to separate the media sensationalism from the reality. We also need to talk about risk and risk management and in a professional way. That wouldn't appeal to a Defence Minister who needs to kick the sexism can for his boss Julia Gillard, feminists, or the media who want an audience.

There are numerous other examples where lobbyists adept in manipulating the media and the media themselves have managed to spread very misleading views and hysteria for secondary gain.

Back in the Fifties and later, the Australian media bothered about fathers in isolated areas who murdered their loved ones. The papers played a few very sad crimes over and over, making it look as though they were common events. It sold papers.

Similarly, recently some mistakes with parole have enabled the media to sensationalise that, calling for populist 'solutions'. The fact is that thousands are released on parole and the system works, but absolutely nothing in life is without risk, including the parole system. However the authorities cannot say that for obvious reasons. So promises are made to 'improve' parole, just as promises are made to 'reform' the military.

Some people on this topic are proposing the old "noble savage" concept where tribes built classless and female sensitive societies and everyone lived Edenic peace. Such a premise is laughable.

Barbarian lives have traditionally been hard, brutish and short. Primitive hunter gatherer societies need an immense amount of land to ensure the survival of only a small number of people. Seasonal variations, droughts, floods, and pestilences ensure that tribes are constantly encroaching upon the claimed territories of other tribes, making tribal hostility and warfare an everyday event.

The reason why the Australian Coastwatchers were so hard for the Japanese to exterminate in WW2 was because many Coastwatchers were either District Officers or plantation owners who were held in great respect by the local native populations. The Australian administration had put an end to millenia of inter tribal headhunting and cannibalism, and there was much relief by the natives because of that one fact.

The use of females as warriors in tribal societies is so rare an event as to be considered statistically insignificant. One reason why the Lewis and Clark expedition was considered by local indians as not being a territory invading war party, was the presence of the young indian woman (and guide) Sacagewaya, who was carrying a baby.

The degree to which tribal societies are very hostile to each other can be gleaned from the fact that 12 months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn,warriors of the Latoka Sioux who had defeated Custer were being used as scouts to help the US army exterminate the Mandans. The Indians hated each other more than they did the US Army.

Tribal fights were usually brief affairs involving very low casualties and tribal fights were often more about day long ceremonial posturing rather than full on killing. What is driving soldiers insane today is the length of time that a modern soldier can expect to be in continuous combat, and the lethality and impersonality of modern weapons creating random deaths and immense casualties.

Any female who dreams of being a soldier should do this.

Wait until there is a rainy night. Not a night where the rain is just sprinkling down, wait for a night when it is really coming down in torrents. Go into the backyard on such a night and dig a hole. Get in the hole. Stay in the hole for a week short of food, devoid of a blanket, and perform all of your normal bodily functions in the hole.

If you think that is bad enough, add somebody shooting at your head every time you put your head up, and high explosive raining down upon you blowing your neighbours in other holes to fragments. Toss in the fact that you will be expected to kill large numbers of people and ask yourself if you can live with that? Then you might get some idea of what it is really like to be a modern warrior in a real war, why military comradeship among men is crucial to survival, and you might understand why so many men break down when confronted with such horrors.

One reason why the death penalty was abolished in Britain was because large numbers of female warders routinely suffered nervous breakdowns when confronted by the hanging of another female. The idea of involving women in the killing of anyone, especially other women, is contrary to the normal (as Poirot would say, "Brutish") instincts of females.

If you want to end up with mental hospitals full of psychologically shattered female soldiers then go right ahead and continue with this feminist fantasy that women can be front line soldiers. And if you want to advocate that men who can live and fight in such conditions need sensitivity training and a more enlightened attitude to female equality, you are going to lose the next war.

On the matter of brutishness.....I'm saying that humans are capable of conceiving order in their societies which is above and beyond that which is experienced in other species. We're capable of psychological removing ourselves from the reality of our condition. We're clever at adaptation and we have the ability to control and shape our environments to suit our needs and desires. However, when the chips are down, we're confronted with our condition as a creature which creeps upon the earth, is often threatened - and forced to act accordingly. That is psychologically difficult to absorb for a species that likes to paper over its carnality.

We're one of the few species that practices war and savagery on our own species as a matter of course.

As far as the physical and practical aspects of warfare and violence are concerned, males appear to be hard-wired to take on that role. I do think there's an aspect of brutishness involved in hacking another human to death or even in the modern sense of blowing other humans to smithereens.

I reiterate the fact that above I wrote "physical and practical" because I believe women support their menfolk in many ways when their territory or resources are threatened from without or when new territories or resources are to be acquired.

LEGO

Just because the AVERAGE strength, muscle mass etc of women is lower than the average for men, this should not disqualify ALL women from combat. And just because combat is rough and uncomfortable, why do you assume that ALL men, and NO women, can cope with this?

And get a grip on all this business about men dropping everything to run and help a downed female soldier. Any soldier worth his training would assess every combat situation on its merits. If a soldier is stupid enough to put archaic notions of chivalry before the safety of his fellow troops, he should not be in a war zone in the first place.

Aristocrat

‘The claim that humans deep down are 'good' and then only corrupted by society is a myth perpetuated by Rousseau. All you've done is exchange one myth for another.’

Caring, compassion and cooperation does not equal ‘good’. War and brutishness does not equal ‘bad’.

I haven’t read Rousseau in any depth, but I suspect his noble savage concept referred to societies living in tune with nature; I doubt if he meant their ‘moral state’.

The more advanced and complex societies become, the more they distance themselves from nature. As societies become more complex, they inevitably adopt ‘unnatural’ behaviour patterns, like military warfare, class hierarchies, stark inequalities of wealth and rigid gender roles.

Poirot

My comments were about anthropology disciplines and documentaries rigidly enforcing male-centric viewpoints and treating women in prehistory as virtually invisible. I ‘belittled’ the stereotypical traditional men’s and women’s roles in equal quantities.

Don’t blame feminism for devaluing women’s traditional role, when it’s overwhelmingly the PATRARCHY that has always done this.

On the beach

‘My mother, grandmothers and the family women before were all armed in their own homes. They all had their .22 or .410 (shotshells) … and no-one ever thought anything odd about that.’

Cool. Tell that to people like LEGO, not me. I’ve got lots of stories like that in my family too. Given the circumstances, opportunity and, where needed, weapons, women are tough survivalists – in war and peace.

‘The story of how women 'won the West' in Australia .. is rarely told and very rarely recognised. That is not the doing of 'men'. That is the doing of middle class feminist ratbags and interests preserving their victim status…’

I’m afraid it IS the doing of ‘men’ – i.e. the male-controlled media – who want to preserve their ‘frail little lady’ stereotype so that men can go on thinking they have to protect (and thus control) women.

Look more closely at how the media only confines its gender coverage to male gender violence (brutish men versus frail little ladies) and women’s work-life-balance choices (because frail little ladies have nothing better to think about, I guess).

Hi Killarney

I am opposed to Mike Bird's opinion, because I do not believe that women should be part of a professional army at all, unless they are in rear area positions. I accept that the sort of men who are their nations professional killers should be more respectful of females, but I can hardly tell the sort of men who are prepared to kill other people on official orders that they are morally reprehensible.

Can I now examine the weakness of your position? You seem to have an ideology which presupposes that females are the equal of males in every way. I hope that I am not misrepresenting your position, and I would welcome clarification on this point if I am.

I do not oppose female equality on most things, unless they clearly violate the laws of biology and psychology. I do oppose the concept of absolute female equality, and I am using the topic of front line soldiers as a clear example of why your position is wrong.

I have now made several posts in which I have explained biological reasons, psychological reasons, and sound military reasons, as to why women can not be front line fighters. Your response to these reasons has been to ignore them, and to keep chanting an ideological mantra that women must be equal to men. Your position is not based upon a sound argument, it is based on ideological conviction, which you can not support with a reasoned argument.

All you could do was to toss a fairly outrageous question at me riven with inaccuracies and demand I explain why it is wrong. Killarney, that tells me right away that your position is untenable. You can't counter my arguments, and you can't submit a reasoned argument to support your own peculiar social theories.

All that you have is an ideology, and you run around OLO finding the odd example that might be used (with a little pushing and shoving of the truth) to conform to your cherished new Aquarian age thinking. It is time to switch on your objective reality circuit.

It isn't 'men' who have placed girls on pedestals as fragile flowers who must always be protected, cosseted and given a leg-up for life lest they miss out on a plum job.

I do not know how far your life experience extends back, but post-WW2 girls were raised as princesses by their doting mothers who did everything for them and did not even ask girls to assist with the minor chores made easier by electrical appliances. It always was that way and there is no change. Give mothers and female teachers a girl until she is six...and she will whinge forever.

On the other hand, there always were women mountain climbers, solo travellers, pilots and so on. While there were constraints, it must also be said that the very large rump of women avoided risk and challenges. The larger rump were content not to try and yes, their doting mums raised them to be like that. Girls are made of all things nice. But boys are made of truly horrid stuff, snails and docked dogs' tails. So boys were always expected to make way for themselves, to take care of themselves physically and mentally and 'STFU', and from a very early age. Women, mothers with the voted overwhelmingly to sent male youths who could not vote to Vietnam too.

The media is always blameworthy for steotyping, but women journalists have been given a heavenly run by editors since Whitlam. Maybe that dream run is the problem, otherwise there wouldn't be so many feminist hacks constantly writing about themselves, vaginas and fifty shades of B.S.

Feminism is a lobby run by and for an elite of humanities educated middle class women whose interest in such subjects as the ADF only extends to bolstering the mantras that keep them where they are: on top and forever preoccupied with their own comfortable, materalistic lifestyles. Not a bad gig for some, decades living high on the hog in the same sinecures while voicing the same old, same old, carping criticisms of men. They could easily have been replaced years with a Xerox machine.

Sorry LEGO, my post replies to Killarney.

I do believe however that technology is making more military roles possible for women. As I have said though, I do not suppose that feminists are at all interested in what jobs might suit women. Feminists are about maintaining their own roles.

Killarney,

Did I read you right that you're saying the more advanced an complex a society, the more rigid the gender roles?

Do you mean the more "technologically" advanced, because if you do, I'm thinking that the reverse is true, particularly in the modern Western world.

Technology enables women to participate as never before, merely because technology enables humans to employ machinery which negates the difference in strength between the genders.

I'd also use the example of women participating in the war effort in Britain during WWII to make weapons in factories while the men were engaging in combat overseas. I think the example of women on the home front in that particular war is instructive as to how important women were to the war effort without being sent to war fronts. Their role in "keeping the home fires burning" and keeping up the supply lines of weapons and machinery was indispensable.

I believe the less advanced traditional or tribal society, the more rigid the gender roles. Of course, a woman's role may be to do just about every practical thing in the village, including assisting men in building the shelters. But a tribal community would conceive itself as and autonomous and bonded group, working together to achieve a better outcome for "itself". I certainly wouldn't see women undervaluing their roles, on the contrary they would recognise the power vested in their roles.

onthebeach,

Talking of xerox machines -

You should remember that feminist principles have flourished because consumer society dictates that we should have as many able bodied people of "working age" out there earning, spending and consuming (we tend to shut those who are outside that age paradigm into institutions)...so it's pertinent to raise the issue of our system of "consume at all costs" when confronting the changes in our society.

Of course, much of the human behaviour we are assigning to the past, is still alive in communities the world over.

We in the West have an extremely narrow concept of "how people live".

When I watched "Human Planet" I was amazed at the models and practices that have survived in this world. Amazing societal structures where women and men cooperate for the good of their communities....yes, with women and men undertaking all kinds of activities and roles.

Certainly opened my eyes to the ways in which people live on this planet - in the here and now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/humanplanetexplorer/