Perhaps the Army could solve the feline combat troop problem by forming a GFN Batallion to be known as the 'Femobats' .

Then we woudn't have to loose the feminine bueaties to battle; and we woudnt have to marry the man haters that are left.

Attention Defence Minister; front and center Femobats!

Gadget ha ha -- that was pretty funny -- Germaine Greer isnt married is she? Now there is a beauty for you. I just cant seem to get off the germs thing can I -- oh well :) :)

What really would be so wrong about female soliders? Many of the young men sent off to war were not particuarly buff, if my images of WW1&WW2 are correct?

The concerns seem to be:
1) Women are too physically weak to beat a man in hand-to-hand combat
ans: probably true in many cases. But if there were 'standards' to be reached, only the women strong enough to reach them would be involved.

2) Women soliders are likely to be subjected to rape if captured
ans: Indeed, a serious issue, and one I do not have an answer to. I suspect some male prisoners have also be subjected to rape, but clearly female capture-ees are more likely to suffer this.

3) Women should not have to see bloody violence
ans: Hmm, I guess we'd better get rid of all female emergency services workers, ER doctors & nurses, police officers, etc. Frankly, if you're prepared for women to be nursing the results of war, you cannot have issue with them seeing how those wounds got there.

4) Women are needed to repopulate a society after massive loss of life.
ans: So, what, ALL women need to be protected from loss of life, but NO men need to be? If your society has lost such numbers that it cannot easily repopulate, then it has probably lost the war and will not be ALLOWED to repopulate.

5) Women are 'emotional'
ans: Surely we've learnt in recent years that men are not all stiff upper lip anyway?

6) Women would disagree with being conscripted
ans: Surely all people disagree with conscription? For anyone? And if there WERE conscription, surely having a larger pool of potential conscriptees would be of benefit to the soceity?

7) Women will negatively impact on the 'team morale'.
ans: Well, they're already in the army/navy/airforce, and there dosn't seem to be team morale problems directly associated with women being around, more the problems appear to be mainly structural, not sex-based.

So in sum: if individual women are physically strong enough, and want to, then why should they not be front-line soliders?

Laurie - Hi.

I can just imagine the peurile jokes queing now within the ADF.

The issue no one has really touched is: why would we want to put our ladies - butch, beautiful, feminine, feminazi, 'femobat' or other on the chopping block. As I indicated in an earlier post on this thread, there are many capable women out there who could no doubt do the job of 'killing'. I don't question that point.

Granted, an enemy (of the state?) is just as dead if shot with a bullet fired from a weapon whose trigger was pulled by a woman as they would be if a man pulled the trigger - that is the lowest common denominator the proponents want it taken down to. That precisely is what we all want to avoid. De-sensitisation by exposure.

Do we really want or need a repeat of the Changi POW Camp/ Burma Railway - this time played out with our women ADF in the picture?
Do we want to see Abu Grahib repeated with female forms in living, pixellated vision on the 7.30 news?

I must reiterate the statement of the whole thing being nothing more than someones GI Jane fantasy which is being orchestrated by faceless, nameless bureaucrats and bent minded social engineers.

Laurie. At first I did not intend replying to your post, but after discussing it with my Grandson,who is a serving soldier, I decided to take issue with you on some of your points;
" Many of the young men sent off to war were not particularly buff if my images of WW1 WW11 are correct" They were just average young men with average mixture of characteristics. However, their performances at Gallipoli, Tobruk, Kokoda, Long Tan etc.etc. were inspirational to the Nation and you do yourself no credit with your remarks.
In reference to "standards" you say that "only women strong enough to reach them would be involved". I appreciate that, but the danger inherent in a policy of women in a combat role is the tendency to drift into "token" females in a combat unit with the inevitable drop in standards.You wrote" Surely we have learned recently that men are not all that stiff upper lip anyway" Well my answer to that is"I hope not" as compassion is part of the makeup of a decent man.My point is that it is extremely traumatic to have a fellow soldier killed alongside one and one can spend the rest of his life wondering if you could have done or not done something which would have saved him/her.
So,Laurie, to align that to trained nurses,doctors SE members and police is not really fair, as much as I admire those people.As Albie rightly put it "Why should we want to put our ladies on the chopping block"

Alamo - I was commenting that many of our soliders in the past have not been especially physically strong, at least on first appearances. That in no way links to any dismissal of their achievements.

And I don't believe that 'tokenism' would lead to any lowering of standards, unless people wish it to happen. Lately standards in the ADF have been offically lowered anyway, which has nothing to do with whether or not women should be allowed in the front line.

To your final comment around why would we want young women killed? Well, why would we want young men killed? Surely it is just as much a tragedy, someone's brother/husband/son/father being killed as it is a sister/wife/daughter/mother? All war involves death and horrible consequences, I simply do not see that young women (of whom I am one) should be anymore protected from this reality than young men. I would think our society should be valuing the lives of its young men and women equally, or indeed, tossing them away equally.