January 24, 2013

L.A. Times: "Women in combat? Old news for lady warriors of the big screen"

From the Los Angeles Times:
Women in combat? Old news for lady warriors of the big screen

By Noelene Clark 
January 24, 2013, 3:55 p.m. 
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the ban on women serving in ground combat units, a landmark decision that will open up some 230,000 military jobs to women. But this is hardly new territory for the ladies of the big screen, where females have been fighting on the front lines for decades. 

The picture gallery includes Meg Ryan in Courage Under Fire and Rihanna in Battleship.
That's not to say these fictional fighters are always on equal footing with their male colleagues. In some films the military heroines spend as much time battling gender barriers as they do fighting the enemy, like Demi Moore's muscled character in "G.I. Jane." ...

In the realm of science fiction, however, there are plenty of films in which nobody bats an eye at women in combat. Take tough-as-nails Pvt. Jenette Vasquez of the Colonial Marines, played by Jenette Goldstein*, in James Cameron's 1986 action thriller "Aliens."

No comment.

* An old buddy of mine had her under contract to star in his butt-kicking babe post-apocalyptic movie around 1989, but it didn't get off the ground. His screenplay was awesome, though: like Road Warrior on motorcycles with Mad Maxine as the heroine.

Anyway, the point is that that the Obama Administration is just acting out a James Cameron fetish of a generation ago. This policy shift would have seemed cool in the 1980s, but now that we finally all understand the nerdy fantasies underlying it, it just seems dorky and lame.

75 comments:

Anonymous said...

How much of this is due to the fact that drones and contractors like Blackwater are used a lot now? If there were a real war, I'm sure they'd conscript young men.

Anonymous said...

"Women in Combat: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Aided by Technology"

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/women-in-combat-an-idea-whose-time-has-come-aided-by-technology/272483/

"We're at a pivotal moment when it comes to the role that brute strength plays in individual soldiers' battle-readiness. And we are finding that moment in some part because of mechanical advances. The Army, for example, has been testing exoskeletons that augment human capabilities -- in particular, by increasing dismounted soldiers' native endurance and strength. Tasks that currently require the vaunted upper-body strength -- loading ammunition into weapons and vehicles, moving battlefield obstacles and payloads -- would, when undertaken with an exoskeleton, ostensibly be accomplished almost effortlessly. DARPA-developed robotic vehicles, similarly -- the AlphaDog, the autonomous mechanical mule -- take equipment-lugging out of human hands. The military has also been developing autonomous vehicles (this totally-not-a-joke teddy bear-faced robot, for example) that are specially designed to rescue injured soldiers on the field, thus negating the need for humans to do that work."

Anonymous said...

How much of this is due to the fact that drones and contractors like Blackwater are used a lot now?

And what percentage of drone 'pilots' are women?

And are Blackwater stupidly leaving all that butt-kicking babe, er, manpower out of their equation?

If there were a real war, I'm sure they'd conscript young men.

Yep.

Harry Baldwin said...

Vasquez had one of the all-time great comebacks in Aliens:

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?

Vasquez: No. Have you?

So, according to the movie Battleship Rihanna's a real ass-kicker? I guess Chris Brown didn't get the memo.

Anonymous said...

Marginally off topic, but an interesting series of recent articles by Frank Salter (e.g., "The War Against Human Nature: Race and the Nation in Media") is reviewed here.

Provocative stuff.

Socially Extinct said...

Technology is our death. We love it. It allows me to type these stupid words which can be read real time around the globe. We fetishize it, we can't give it up. Technology infiltrates our life like tendrils and we can't imagine life without it.

Technology is the real reason for "women's lib." It is the great equalizer. "Armed combat" is merely the latest, greatest manifestation of it.

Whatever, talk disparagingly of feminism while you cling to your stupid iPhone. The 2 are not so disconnected.

Silver said...

In the realm of science fiction, however, there are plenty of films in which nobody bats an eye at women in combat.

Should have mentioned "Starship Troopers." The extreme gender equality in that film is probably a big reason they were able to get away with the overtly fascistic motif.

Of course, science fiction is probably where nobody noticing sexual differences will remain, no matter how many fanatical equalitarians it causes to choke with anger. I guess there was a sort of inevitability to women-in-combat, though, so best to dismiss it with a resigned smirk and wait until the loons get it out of their system. Then perhaps one day we can get back to sexual realism.

a Newsreader said...

This is nothing but a pretense for more kulak-beating from the administration. They're trying to bait the conservative media into going batty over this. The Obama media will gloat.

V said...

People shouldn't underestimate the effect that Hollywood, pop culture and movies have in the public conscience. Many can't conceive reality outside of the media.

Anonymous said...

And what percentage of drone 'pilots' are women?

Drone pilots command their drones from air-conditioned trailers in Nevada:

http://trueslant.com/jefftietz/2009/04/16/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-drone-pilot/

They're like video games, so most of the pilots are men, since men actually like video games and are good at them, while women have little interest in video games and are terrible at them.

Anonymous said...

Technology is the real reason for "women's lib." It is the great equalizer. "Armed combat" is merely the latest, greatest manifestation of it.

It potentially could get a lot scarier. Like genetic engineering scary. Imagine women being given genetic engineering tech to become stronger than men, and men being restricted from similar tech.

Anonymous said...

This is sort of like the black presidents in movies thing.

Anonymous said...

I read the drone pilot link. Whats with the 12 hour shifts? Surely one benefit is that the pilots are safe on the ground and well rested, whats the point of punishing them 12 hours at a time? Hey lets make a life-or-death decision after 11 hours 45 mins of fiddling with joysticks and staring at a screen.

Anonymous said...

Seems that the human brain just plain can't sort out the difference between the silver screen and the real world.

People SAY: "Ah knows it's just a movie."

What movies REALLY do is that their messages and imagery infest some small part of the viewer's hippocampus and from there spread around the rest of the brain like a fungus.

I have no other explanation for people trying to remake the real world in the image of Hollywood fantasies.

Women soldiers (Vazquez!), James Cameron trusted to fix a busted oil well or Washington DC collectively trying to make real all those presidential performances of Morgan Freeman are just the tip of the iceberg.

Heck, I'd be rich if I had a dime for every time I catch people (perhaps unconsciously) uttering some actor's thinly disguised lines in lieu of going through their own thought process and articulating whatever comes out of it.

PS: Sorry for my English. Not my first language and I am out of practice. Note to self: Brush up usage of idiom by watching more American movies.

Anonymous said...

surprise!!

"Janet quickly finds herself the object of a man’s attention, and after he harasses her, Janet knocks the man down and mocks him. Because Joanna’s world believes that women are inferior to men, everyone is shocked. Janet expresses her desire to experience living with a typical family so Joanna takes Janet to the Wildings’ household. Janet meets their daughter Laura Rose who instantly admires Janet’s confidence and independence as a woman. Laura realizes that she is attracted to Janet and begins to pursue a sexual relationship with her. This is transgressive for both of them, as Whileaway's taboo against cross-generational relationships (having a relationship with someone old enough to be your parent or child) is as strong as the taboo against same-sex relationships on Laura's world."

- The Female Man, Janet comes from a world in which men are gone, as is usual in many feminist sci-fi novels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Man

real-life surprise:

"She told me the following about her experiences: "I was stunned. The Army was a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home. I took training seriously and really tried to keep up with the men. I found I couldn't. It wasn't even close. I had no idea the difference in physical ability was so huge. There were always crowds of women sitting out exercises or on crutches from training injuries. "

http://www.fredoneverything.net/MilMed.shtml

Anonymous said...

"Technology is the real reason for "women's lib.""

apparently the high level of technologies during their times explains the rise of misogynistic religions?


"Despite the extra physical drilling the agency granted the new hires, Shaw’s bull** detector went off immediately. He instinctively knew that very few of them would develop the strength and stamina necessary to haul a fifty-foot length of fire hose up a slope. For the next several years it became routine for him to order his female crew members back down the hill to stand by, while he and his two firemen held off the blaze until one or more other engine units arrived.

Most of the women did not stay long in the most grueling jobs, but they were invariably replaced by others overwhelmed by the tasks. Shaw was eventually denied a position as fire management officer. He said a much less qualified woman was chosen instead. He told Burchfield:

No one had any respect for her; no one had any respect for fire management; no one had any respect for the Forest, and no respect for the agency. It all drained away.

Ironically, affirmative action made for a level of hostility toward female employees that did not exist before. Sensitivity training became standard."

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/06/how-feminism-wrecked-the-u-s-forest-service/

Anonymous said...

People shouldn't underestimate the effect that Hollywood, pop culture and movies have in the public conscience. Many can't conceive reality outside of the media.

I don't know that they are unable to conceive reality outside the media. What I have found astonishing, however, is how easily people assimilate media content into reality or fact, even programs that are explicitly fiction.

Silver said...

Technology is the real reason for "women's lib." It is the great equalizer.

But what's so bad about that? However many issues there may be with the way women's lib has played out, the idea isn't inherently flawed. I refuse to be sucked into this game of despising everything that has happened the last fifty or one hundred or five hundred years (depending on who you ask) just because the results today are less than encouraging (shall we say). So we overshot the mark, okay. That doesn't justify lurching back toward the other extreme.

Modern Abraham said...

The U.S. military officially jumped the shark during the Obama administration. Serving in front-line military units will in 10 years seem like a very gay thing to do. Why gay? Anything that requires lots of technical skill but is actually an obsolete craft quickly becomes identified as gay:

* Broadway (especially singing and dancing to showtunes)- very gay; became gay when video and film obsoleted the need to perform flawlessly in what was essentially one long take; why bother with that level of skill when you can edit together as good a performance over multiple takes?
* magic/puppeteering- gay; again, lots of technical skill for a craft that the gen-pop has ignored for quite a while (cf. Kevin Clash, voice of Elmo)
* owning journals of opinion- gay; Chris Hughes buys New Republic; for every big magazine of opinion, can name 10 blogs that cover same territory better and in more timely manner; Hughes mentions TNR's "rich history" and somehow remembers Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were once readers; this is simply intellectual antiquing

So how does this apply to the military? When fat, slobby, joystick-monkeys with armpit stains can blow away anything on land or air from the comfort of their beanbags in some remote trailer, what's the point of lifting weights and then getting sweaty with a bunch of other dudes in some tropical locale just to personally deliver that same ordinance? Top Gun, Predator, two of the butt-kickingest, "manly" flicks of the '80's- both look ridiculously gay now.

BTW, whole drone thing was predicted by Tom Cruise's character in Color of Money. Can't recall if that was brilliant or one of those obvious things everyone was predicting back then (e.g. "China will become an economic superpower").

Dr Van Nostrand said...

No comment"

Of course! As Theodore Dalrymple put it when an art school graduate mentioned to him she knew all about Lichtenstein but knew not of this Carvaggio fellow-

as satire is impossible, commentary would be superfluous.

Dr Van Nostrand said...


* Broadway (especially singing and dancing to showtunes)- very gay; became gay when video and film obsoleted the need to perform flawlessly in what was essentially one long take; why bother with that level of skill when you can edit together as good a performance over multiple takes?"

In that case why isnt "serious" theater gay? Why arent Civil War re enacters gay?
Music and dancing in the west is unfortunately associated with somewhat effeminate men since atleast the death of vaudeville.


* magic/puppeteering- gay; again, lots of technical skill for a craft that the gen-pop has ignored for quite a while (cf. Kevin Clash, voice of Elmo)"

Claudi Schiffer may diasgree. Seriously though THIS is your evidence? Many men actually learn some magic tricks to impress women.Indeed some "game" enthusiasts recommend it.
As for puppetry, I doubt many grown straight men are fans of Sesame street. They dont mind funny puppets such as crank yankers


* owning journals of opinion- gay; Chris Hughes buys New Republic; for every big magazine of opinion, can name 10 blogs that cover same territory better and in more timely manner; Hughes mentions TNR's "rich history" and somehow remembers Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were once readers; this is simply intellectual antiquing"

Sorry but that is ONE example and your reasoning is very poor even in this instance.



So how does this apply to the military? When fat, slobby, joystick-monkeys with armpit stains can blow away anything on land or air from the comfort of their beanbags in some remote trailer,

Actually no, one of the prerequisites of being a drone "pilot" and operator is that you have to had been actual air force pilot!
Killing people by drones maybe easier than being doing by a manned fighter jet but that doesn't mean its easy enough to hand it over to some undisciplined joystick monkey.
It is a very sophisticated and mentally exhausting procedure that most people cant hack.
Where do you get your information?



what's the point of lifting weights and then getting sweaty with a bunch of other dudes in some tropical locale just to personally deliver that same ordinance? Top Gun, Predator, two of the butt-kickingest, "manly" flicks of the '80's- both look ridiculously gay now."

Thats only if you listen too many Tarantino interviews.



BTW, whole drone thing was predicted by Tom Cruise's character in Color of Money. Can't recall if that was brilliant or one of those obvious things everyone was predicting back then (e.g. "China will become an economic superpower")."


So there you have it, a guy who looks to a fictional character played by Tom Cruise for future of military technology will have the goods on the U.S military in ten years time - it will be gay!!!

I love Steves blog and many of the comments but often you get the weirdest of reductionists.

I am not a fan of women in combat but I dont think it will have any effect on the military's cohesion in the long run IF they don't degrade the stringent requirements needed to eligible for combat duty.
Im not holding my breath though as military did do that in the past due to govt(ie feminist) pressure.

Aaron Gross said...

Maybe a little off-topic, but as a Jewish Supremacist I feel obliged to mention that the phrase "hot IDF babes" got about a thousand Google hits, while the phrase "hot US Army babes" got six hits.

Hunsdon said...

DVN said: I am not a fan of women in combat but I dont think it will have any effect on the military's cohesion in the long run IF they don't degrade the stringent requirements needed to eligible for combat duty.

Hunsdon said: Ah, if only it were true. Sir, I used to think the same way, until I infiltrated the belly of the beast and saw the horrid truth for myself.

They WILL (and have) lowered the physical standards, and absent that, women will always interfere with unit cohesion: we're talking about 18-22 year olds in peak condition.

Aaron Gross said: as a Jewish Supremacist I feel obliged to mention that the phrase "hot IDF babes" got about a thousand Google hits, while the phrase "hot US Army babes" got six hits.

Hunsdon: That's because IDF babes are about a thousand times hotter than Army babes.

Anonymous said...

Maybe a little off-topic, but as a Jewish Supremacist I feel obliged to mention that the phrase "hot IDF babes" got about a thousand Google hits, while the phrase "hot US Army babes" got six hits.

Could be a mustache fetish thing.

Cail Corishev said...

"Top Gun, Predator, two of the butt-kickingest, "manly" flicks of the '80's- both look ridiculously gay now."

Dude, Top Gun was always totally gay.

Anonymous said...

Let's say Big Gov tried to integrate pro sports - very, very few, if any, women would start on any team, and if BIg Gov responded by demanding disparate impact rules and women had to be put on teams, fans would walk away and the salaries would dwindle, but when Big Gov owns the team, everyone is forced to be a ticket buyer.

DYork said...

Take tough-as-nails Pvt. Jenette Vasquez of the Colonial Marines, played by Jenette Goldstein*, in James Cameron's 1986 action thriller "Aliens."

Jenette now runs a specialty bra shop in LA.

LOL. Ugh...women.

Anonymous said...

Look on the bright side- at least this didn't happen back when it was a cool new idea. President Clinton and spouse would have loved to have rammed this through back in 1992, but conservative opposition was fierce enough that progressives had to settle for a Fabian strategy of gradual introduction to more and more roles, boiling-frog style. Think of all the (admittedly useless) wars we've fought in the past 20 years. Now think of the damage that could have been done by having women in combat in some of those messes (Women fighting Iraqi insurgents? The propaganda damage alone is Abu Ghraib time 1,000). Forcing one's opponent to delay a terrible decision for two whole decades is pretty good, in its own way.

Marlowe said...

Screw James Cameron. What about Russ Meyer's Faster pussycat! kill! kill! (1965). Mr. Meyer also served in uniform during WWII.

Anonymous said...

@Aaron - when you require every female aged 18-52 to serve in the army, i would imagine you might get a few hot ones.

Ex Submarine Officer said...

Maybe a little off-topic, but as a Jewish Supremacist I feel obliged to mention that the phrase "hot IDF babes" got about a thousand Google hits, while the phrase "hot US Army babes" got six hits.

Thread winner, so far IMO.

I love Steves blog and many of the comments

The comments are what puts iSteve completely over the top. Steve deserves mad props for whatever pixie dust he sprinkles on this blog that nurtures this, uh, idiosyncratic commentariat.

peterike said...

There is another way to look at this. Women are obviously not as strong as men, but they can often be far more cruel. Women are also far less committed to concepts like "nation," "race" and that old rag The Constitution.

So since the future direction of the U.S. armed forces is a military force dedicated to suppressing U.S. residents (the notion of "citizen" will be long gone), then it makes perfect sense to seed women into combat ranks. They will be much, much less resistant to ordering assaults on their own people.

Mr. Anon said...

"In the realm of science fiction, however, there are plenty of films in which nobody bats an eye at women in combat. Take tough-as-nails Pvt. Jenette Vasquez of the Colonial Marines, played by Jenette Goldstein*, in James Cameron's 1986 action thriller "Aliens.""

In the realm of science fiction, nobody bats an eye at space-craft that are seemingly built out of steel, like battleships, and defy all the laws of physics. Nobody bats an eye at creatures that can grow from melon-sized larvae to eight foot tall killing machines within the space of a few hours. Nobody bats an eye at organisms that defy the conservation of energy.

Nobody bats an eye at such things because most science fiction is written by people who know next-to-nothing about science. Just as most journalism is produced by journalists who know next-to-nothing about just about anything.

Anonymous said...

biatchland, biatchland uber alles

Hacienda said...

Leon Panetta- The saddest looking man on planet Earth.

Hacienda said...

"Pvt. Jenette Vasquez of the Colonial Marines, played by Jenette Goldstein*, in James Cameron's 1986 action thriller "Aliens.""

No comment.
--------------------------

The same things that make you live, can kill you in the end.

From Hank to Hendrix, Neil Young

Modern Abraham said...

We live in a constellation of sexual roles, with overlaps at the margins.

In general heterosexual men:

* like to build stuff
* like to blow-up stuff that's been built
* like to chase and bed lots of women
* like to do all the above with as little effort as possible- i.e. we're damn lazy when we can get away with it

What's your favorite post-coital activity? Mine is going into a coma for the next 4 hours, not working out set design variations for a revival of Streetcar. If men didn't have women to inspire and challenge us we would all still be living in caves with 100" plasma TV's inside, Corvette Stingrays parked outside.

Why arent Civil War re enacters gay?

Not gay, just nerdy. Simulating blowing-up stuff. (Neotenic) heterosexual male activity.

Sorry but that is ONE example and your reasoning is very poor even in this instance.

Maybe not the only one. And, again, opionion journals are just becoming obsolete, so still in a transitional phase.

Thats only if you listen too many Tarantino interviews.

I'mo old enough to remember the '80's and what was considered bitchin' and awesome back then. The latest attempt to revive the beefcake, muscle beach action star (300) was laughed off the stage for how gay it now seems. You're telling me this doesn't look gay now? Or this?

My comment was 3/4 tongue-in-cheek, but combine openly gay boys club culture, muscle-beach aesthetics, and tropical ambience as armed forces are called upon to invade one 3rd World hellhole after another and I could very well see on-the-ground military service become an increasing gay ghetto. Or maybe 1/3 gay- 1/3 barrio from Hispanic canon fodder- 1/3 single mother welfare program.

SGOTI said...

" If men didn't have women to inspire and challenge us we would all still be living in caves with 100" plasma TV's inside, Corvette Stingrays parked outside."

If there is a merciful God in Heaven, please tell me such a place exists and what are the HOA fees.

Anonymous said...

Take tough-as-nails Pvt. Jenette Vasquez of the Colonial Marines, played by Jenette Goldstein*, in James Cameron's 1986 action thriller "Aliens."


For liberals, the line between fantasy and reality is a blurry one.

Anonymous said...

Liberals don't seem to get the joke.

There are women in combat in science fiction because *ahem* it is science FICTION.

It isn't realistic. Well, most of it isn't realistic at least.

Anonymous said...

The Administration is going with media popular "feel good" stuff like gay marriage, gun control, women in combat, dramatic sounding with low short term costs.

They aren't interested in the long term costs of these things.

Anonymous said...

"Harry Baldwin said...
Vasquez had one of the all-time great comebacks in Aliens:

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?

Vasquez: No. Have you?"

Alas, Cameron was plagiarizing once again. That exchange originally took place between Noel Coward and an actress whose name I forget...

Rev. Right said...

"This policy shift would have seemed cool in the 1980s, but now that we finally all understand the nerdy fantasies underlying it, it just seems dorky and lame."

One could say that of almost all of Obama's policies, which seem to have been formulated during his Reagan administration-hating days at Columbia. Everything he does seems to be designed to undo something Reagan accomplished.

One thing Reagan accomplished was rebuilding an effective military. Obama will fix that. Today, the military is still a bastion of tradtional conservative American culture, heavily white, male and Christian in its elite institutions. Therefore "Change" must come to the military. Installing a female leadership will make it a liberal institution. Promoting homosexual recruitment will decimate the number of young men from traditional military families who will enlist. We will have vastly less effective fighting force, but its budget, influence and power will be held, with the rest of the government, in leftist hands.

Mission accomplished.

Anonymous said...

Not to be conspiratorial or anything, but isn't it possible Obama's putting women into combat roles so that the U.S. can lose even more wars?

Just a thought.

F said...

@Modern Abraham

I'm old enough to remember the 80s too. And no, movies like Predator or Top Gun are not "gay" except when gay advocates get their hands on them. Nor was 300 "gay" in any way except for showing male bodies. Is it gay to see men at all? Seriously.

You realize the clips you posted were specifically re-cut to create a homosexual element that isn't actually present in the movie, right?

The Anti-Gnostic said...

I could very well see on-the-ground military service become an increasing gay ghetto. Or maybe 1/3 gay- 1/3 barrio from Hispanic canon fodder- 1/3 single mother welfare program.

Of course it will be. The US armed forces are a gay, female pageant. And men will do what they've always done: leave the institution. For now, men can still hole up in the merc companies and Special Forces but everyone knows they're next in the the Gramscian march. The military will become reliant on drone technology and soon to come, remote-driven tanks.

So women and gays will get their cool uniforms and medals and big parades for operating computers, but everybody will know it's not because they ever demonstrated physical prowess and steel nerves under fire. Prestige will naturally degrade, like the increasingly catty, henny-penny and now extinct astronaut corps.

It's an iron law. When you knock the walls down for women and gays, the straight males who were the only reason the institution was ever considered prestigious head for the exits. Well no shit Sherlock.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Actually no, one of the prerequisites of being a drone "pilot" and operator is that you have to had been actual air force pilot! Killing people by drones maybe easier than being doing by a manned fighter jet but that doesn't mean its easy enough to hand it over to some undisciplined joystick monkey. It is a very sophisticated and mentally exhausting procedure that most people cant hack.

Keep telling yourself that, Iceman. You know how many minority votes you can buy for the cost of one F/A-18 and the thousands of hours training the handsome white guy to fly it?

They will start churning out those drones like a Chinese firework factory. Recruiters will put up posters in the barrio, tell them they're all 'airmen' ('scuse me, airpersons) and sit them down at the computer monitors, row upon row.

Anonymous said...

What about Russ Meyer's Faster pussycat! kill! kill!

But that was obviously meaningless nonsense.

I think Ripley in Alien (1980) was where a lot of the rot set in.

jeanne said...

Women-doing-men's-work always seemed like a game between men to me. I know there is a certain kind of guy who likes to hire female musicians and brag how they played better than the guys who auditioned.

Good thing for women like me, but I'm not sure what the guy gets out of it. And no it wasn't sex, it was more in-your-face "you suck, you play worse than a girl" sort of thing.

So I see the movie fetish with kickass females as more likely the directors' ridicule of the competition.

Anonymous said...

MOdern Abraham's comments are on target ("I'mo old enough to remember the '80's and what was considered bitchin' and awesome back then. The latest attempt to revive the beefcake, muscle beach action star (300) was laughed off the stage for how gay it now seems. You're telling me this doesn't look gay now? Or this?")

Everytime I see a male who has 6 pack abs and rounded tooshes, I think "gay." In fact, some of the wide receivers of the NFL (Larry Fitzgerald comes to mind), I wonder, "Is he or isn't he?"

Yeah, okay, muscles don't HAVE to mean "gay and trying hard to look manly," but hasn't it always been true that a guy who works really hard to build muscles when his livelihood doesn't require it is too much concerned with his looks, a non-manly trait, anyway?

paleopaleo said...

If US combat troops can be co-ed why not our US Olympic teams?

Anonymous said...

hasn't it always been true that a guy who works really hard to build muscles when his livelihood doesn't require it is too much concerned with his looks, a non-manly trait, anyway?

The first thing I think is the the guy in question is shallow, a bit too worried about his hair, clothes, 'look'. But yes, on top of that they might be gay as well.

Anonymous said...

"Why arent Civil War re enacters gay?"

Cuz they're too busy 'enacting' the Spartans?

Anonymous said...

Maybe there will be PSM pills that hold it off.

Anonymous said...

Top Gun, Predator, two of the butt-kickingest, "manly" flicks of the '80's- both look ridiculously gay now.



Eh. Guys reading books or playing a musical instrument is also "ridiculously gay now". The problem is with "now".

You know what I think is gay? Guys who claim to see gayness lurking under every bed or hidden in every movie are gay. In fact they're as queer as a three dollar bill.

You see these guys on every comment thread about gayness, competing with each other as to who is most revolted by the thought of the male body. "I once saw my twelve year old son naked - and I was so traumatized I puked!"

It doesn't have the effect I think they're aiming for. In fact it has the opposite effect. Genuinely hetro guys do not have a neurotic fear of and obsession with homosexuality.

Truth said...

"Everytime I see a male who has 6 pack abs and rounded tooshes..."

You admit to looking a a guy's "toosh" and HE'S gay?

Anonymous said...

peterike said...
There is another way to look at this. Women are obviously not as strong as men, but they can often be far more cruel. Women are also far less committed to concepts like "nation," "race" and that old rag The Constitution.

So since the future direction of the U.S. armed forces is a military force dedicated to suppressing U.S. residents (the notion of "citizen" will be long gone), then it makes perfect sense to seed women into combat ranks. They will be much, much less resistant to ordering assaults on their own people.

1/25/13, 8:02 AM


This.


and where have we seen this before? oh yeah,

Milgram experiment:


Charles Sheridan and Richard King hypothesized that some of Milgram's subjects may have suspected that the victim was faking, so they repeated the experiment with a real victim: a "cute, fluffy puppy" who was given real, albeit harmless, electric shocks. They found similar findings to Milgram:

half of the male subjects and

all of the females obeyed to the end.

Many subjects showed high levels of distress during the experiment and some openly wept. In addition, Sheridan and King found that the duration for which the shock button was pressed decreased as the shocks got higher, meaning that for higher shock levels, subjects showed more hesitance towards delivering the shocks.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment


Glaivester said...

Maybe a little off-topic, but as a Jewish Supremacist

Are you an Ashkenazi supremacist, or is a Mizrahi or a Sephardi just as good?

Anonymous said...

You admit to looking a a guy's "toosh" and HE'S gay?

Lol!

Anonymous said...

"So I see the movie fetish with kickass females as more likely the directors' ridicule of the competition. "

to use a phrase from sheila jeffreys, they're nerds eroticizing their own emasculation.

Silver said...

MOdern Abraham's comments are on target

No, they are not. Quite likely both you and he are gay.

That reminds me, the fact that straight men find gay sex physically disgusting is not the only reason for us to resist the gay agenda. The way the gay agenda attempts to pervert sexual reality for its own ends is reason enough on its own.

Anonymous said...

America is uniquely bizarre and sick in its efforts to masculinize women.

Marlowe said...

But that was obviously meaningless nonsense.

I think Ripley in Alien (1980) was where a lot of the rot set in.


Exploitation movies of the early '70s featured tough gals with guns and female avengers back when Jimmy Cameron was still reading Robert Heinlein books & dreaming of one day putting the images conjured in his mind on the screen of his local flea pit.

I think Bernadette Dohrn of the Weather(man) Underground, Gudrun Ensslin & Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction and Patty Hearst of the Symbionese Liberation Army had more to do with the empowered woman becoming dominant than a 1979 horror flick where the heroine runs away from the alien monster (until she finds herself cornered with no place to flee).

BB said...

Let´s face it, the US military has become a vast jobs program and accordingly is way oversized.
So a set number of mock female warriors wouldn´t interfere much with operations. The real question is: how long can the USA afford its military?


Anonymous said...

cumbat

Svigor said...

I for one am all for having as homosexual, female, disabled, and NAM a military as possible. And make that gov't, not just military.

Svigor said...

Personally, I think it's a crime that women aren't pulling their share on the front lines. Or on oil rigs. Or on garbage trucks. Or in any other non-air-conditioned setting.

I say we link how much gender equality we promote in air-conditioned settings to how much gender equality women seek in non-air-conditioned settings.

Svigor said...

I also think it's time for women to pull their weight in society; no more of this "my body, my choice, your paycheck" stuff. Time for "your body, your choice, your responsibility"; women get all the reproductive decisions, then they get all the reproductive responsibilities.

Baloo said...

Women don't belong in combat, except maybe for Diana Rigg. Anyhow, linked here:
Israeli Ladies in Combat

rob said...

Truth said...
"Everytime I see a male who has 6 pack abs and rounded tooshes..."

You admit to looking a a guy's "toosh" and HE'S gay?


Well, there is a population of people who could have more than a passing interest in whether a dude is gay, and would look at guy's tooshies, yet not be gay. This population outnumbers gay men ~25 times.

Anonymous said...

On Sci-fi Vickers is able to pin the acknowledged android to the wall in Prometheus because she is also an android. Maybe the character would have got more respect if it were an iOS unit?

Anonymous said...

there is a population of people who could have more than a passing interest in whether a dude is gay, and would look at guy's tooshies, yet not be gay. This population outnumbers gay men ~25 time



Really? Who IS this population? I can tell you that normal straight men do not spend their time checking out other guys "tooshies" in the (idiotically mistaken) belief that this body part coveys some information about whether the dude in question is gay.

Nor do normal straight men have a "more than passing interest in whether a dude is gay". Now, figuring out whether some woman is gay or straight is a much more pressing matter. But the sex life of that guy sitting across from me on the train or in the office? I don't know, and don't really want to know.

I will tell you that if I see you staring at my butt, my reaction is not going to be "Oh no, he thinks I'm gay!"

It's going to be "Oh dear, he is gay, now I have to give him the brush-off."

Here's a news flash for you, kiddo: Some men are utterly butt-less and are also flaming homosexuals, while other men are straight as an arrow in spite of their attractive posteriors. There is absolutely zero correlation between the shape of a mans ass and his sexual orientation. (Or a womans, for that matter)

Hacienda said...

"America is uniquely bizarre and sick in its efforts to masculinize women."

White women seem to be confused between the Asian ideal and the African ideal of womanhood.

rob said...

Really? Who IS this population? I can tell you that normal straight men do not spend their time checking out other guys "tooshies" in the (idiotically mistaken) belief that this body part coveys some information about whether the dude in question is gay.

I can't believe you couldn't figure that out! The answer is chicks.

Anonymous said...

Women are not particularly concerned with whether or not a man is gay. What, they're going to mistakenly hit on him? Women don't hit on men, as a general rule. So the fact that a specific individual guy is gay does not have the same potential for awkwardness or embarrassment as a guy guessing a womans orientation incorrectly.

They are into mens butts though. Never quite understood the biology behind that, but I'm not complaining.