Robert has a very measured piece about defence, including thinking about women in combat roles. He mentioned Greg Sheridan’s column in The Australian, in which Sheridan offered several arguments contra women in front-line combat. Robert is clearly a nice person. I, on the other hand, may not be. Here’s a cross-post of my analysis of Sheridan’s column. Consider this light entertainment for a Friday afternoon.
Equality for women in war is sheer lunacy
You just know that Greg Sheridan is going to be on a sexist roll when the highlighted sentence from his column is…
The wilder shores of feminism have never been inhabited by normal people.
(Headline and quote from the print edition: the subbing of the on-line edition is slightly different.)
Hmm… well… the wilder shores of opinion writing in The Australian have clearly never been bedeviled by logical argument. Sheridan takes as his target the idea that women should be able to fight in all front-line combat units of the Australian army, if they (i.e. the individual women concerned) meet the physical requirements to do so. Sheridan doesn’t like it, and he says so, in several silly arguments, after saying that it’s the single stupidest idea he’s ever heard in his lifetime.
Warning: I might just be a little sarcastic in my responses to his arguments.
(1) It will denature women.
Because women are soft and cuddly and it would just be wrong for them to be anything else. And we certainly wouldn’t let individual women choose for themselves! No, they had better all be soft and cuddly, all the time, and never do anything that implies that they capable of strong, physical action.
Later in the piece, Sheridan suggests that one day, science may enable men to have artificial wombs, asks, “Would we want to do that?” and says, “No – of course not!” So it becomes clear what he has in mind: women are for making babies, and men are for fighting. Whoa! The gender essentialism is amazing. Memo to Sheridan: if you look around, you know, like, outside your office window, you will see that women can do lots and lots and lots of things, other than making babies.
(2) The Israeli army doesn’t let women serve in the front-line.
Since when has the Israeli army been an example of good practice? And just maybe, the Israeli army might be prone to the same mistaken ideals about what women are and aren’t capable of doing as Sheridan?
(3) Women aren’t strong enough to lift 45 kilo shells. In fact, they’re just not strong enough to be front-line soldiers fullstop.
Some women aren’t, just as some men aren’t. Some women can lift 45 kilo shells, just as some men can. The ability to lift 45 kilo shells is not predicated on having a penis. If the individual can complete the task, then there is no reason for her not to have the chance to perform it.
Sheridan suggests that in order to accomodate women, standards will drop and that’s a reason not to have women at the front-line. But, surely the other possible conclusion is that care should be taken to ensure that standards don’t drop.
(4) The men will try to protect the women. This is a bad thing which will interfere with their operational effectiveness.
You know, in every single damn war movie I’ve watched, there’s a heartbreaking moment where a fit, uninjured man goes back to help his wounded buddy. This is seen as a good thing. They all look after each other, and no man is left behind.
So it’s a good thing when men protect and look after other men, but a bad thing when men protect and look after the female comrades?
(5) The blokes won’t be able to bond with each other.
D’uh! The units will still be able to bond with each other, because they will bond as a fighting unit, not as a group of men. Or is he suggesting that in order to be able to bond, men need to exclude women, and treat women like sh*t? If that’s the case, then just maybe there’s something horribly wrong with the whole process of male-bonding, and it needs to be changed, rather than encouraged.
(6) War requires warriors and everyone knows that warriors are men and have always been men.
Bingo! The naturalistic fallacy. I knew it would come out soon or later. Sheridan indulges in both versions of it, the is-ought problem, and assuming that if it’s natural, it must be good.
The is-ought problem: using “is” claims in your premises, or claims about the way the world is (eg. only men are warriors), but putting an “ought” claim, or a claim about the way the world ought to be in your conclusion (e.g only men ought to be warriors). As a matter of philosophical logic, you can’t have something in your conclusion that is not in your premises. it’s a little like algebra, and indeed all mathematics: you can’t have something in your answer that isn’t in the mathematical arguments to start with. Sheridan has used only “is” claims, but then he concludes with an “ought” statement.
But more that than, he assumes throughout the piece that because men are naturally fighters, and women are naturally soft cuddly baby machines, this is good. It’s natural, therefore it’s the way the world ought to be. Leaving aside whether or not it’s natural, there are many, many things that are “natural” and not good. I’m sure you can come up with half a dozen examples by lunchtime. Here’s an analogous argument.
- All the world’s societies have been slave-holding societies.
- This is natural.
- Therefore, slave holding is good.
I’m sure you can see the problem. Sheridan can’t.
(7) And the real doozy:
Our society is awash with violence. Just walk through the centre of Melbourne about 1am any Saturday night if you don’t believe me. Much of that violence is directed at women. To remove any notion that women are special, that men have an absolute obligation to protect women, is to coarsen and infantilise our society.
Because we’ve really noticed how our society is ssssoooooooo concerned about eliminating violence against women. That’s why when a woman is pack-raped by a rugby league team, it’s her fault. That’s why women who are victims of domestic violence were “asking for it.” That’s why it’s okay to assault and humiliate and demean women, because they are special.
I’ll believe that Sheridan and his cohorts are really concerned about protecting women when they devote just a little time to worrying about the violence that ordinary women suffer every day.
Having said all that, I loathe wars, and warmaking, and violence, and I tend to pacifism, ‘though not absolutely. But if we are going to have roles for trained killers in our society, then the question of who should be able to fill those roles should be based on who can perform the required tasks, not on outdated notions of gender essentialism and social custom.
I don’t think its a good idea to send young women or young men off to war to possibly die. (Unless they’re the children of the elderly politicians who declare the war. And I’m not that keen on that. Notice how a lot of the time its always the old men who are keen to kill off the young kids?
Deborah, thanks very much for this.
I think we should have an LP contest to identify the stupidest Greg Sheridan column of all time. The one you’ve so neatly taken apart is up there, but there was also this one, in which Sheridan takes warporn to heights not previously seen outside a Tom Clancy novel.
Standing ovation, Deborah.
A coupe of weeks ago Sheridan wrote a column on the challenges facing Japan in which he argued that social conservatives, in Japan as in Australia, had to get over their white picket fence fixation and deal with the reality that if governments and companies adopt policies which make it hard for women to combine work and childbearing, quite a lot of women will keep the job and the independent income and forego the nappy-changing. I womder whether his latest effort is an attempt to get back onto the dinner invitation lists of George Pell and the Shanahan family.
Further to Robert #2, Sheridan’s columns oscillate wildly in quality between those he writes when he has his adult analytical brain switched on, and those he writes when his adolescent ideological amygdala is in control.
Paul, is that Shanaheridan or Sherihanadan?
Oooops (takes sock off hand)
Have Greg Sheridan and Angela Shanahan ever been photographed together, and if not does this mean that they are actually the same person?
A great analysis of a bloody stupid article. BTW, Mr Sheridan, I’m female and I can lift 45kg without difficulty. Of course, I don’t have kids, so maybe I’m a man in disguise?
Yep, good one Deborah.
And the last paragraph, ably seconded by Paul in post #1, was a necessary addition.
Women in the front line? Nah. Elsewhere in the armed forces, sure.
Ah hell, what do I know about war? Still, may as well venture an opinion.
I guess it is probably living hell once you are in the thick of it, with people being blown to bits in front of you. Probably no amount of training would substitute for the actual grim reality?
Anyway, I agree with Sheridan that women are special. Valuable even.
They are special enough to self-select on whether the war is significant enough to them personally, that they would risk their lives to fight.
If they are suited to the front line for some reason, and they want to do it, then good on them. Takes all types.
That said, this little black duck aint fighting with guns for anything less than a direct attack on hearth and home. And then it will be fighting to win.
Not necessarily in the front line – a team effort has many roles in it. My limited experience with guns suggests I am an average shot, provided the target stays absolutely still, and has helpful rings around it to improve my aim.
The best role depends on what is the best distribution of tasks to the available skill sets, in order to win. Hopefully our military keeps the end objective uppermost, rather than the idealistic agendas of the backseat drivers?
Women as entomologists? Nah. As general arthropodologists, sure.
the wilder shores of opinion writing in The Australian have clearly never been bedeviled by logical argument.
.
Ha! Class comeback. The wilder shores of feminism aren’t inhabited by normal people. Would we know who Mary Wollostencraft was if she were normal?
.
Incoming brain fart! Only one? This is the internet!
I guess Sheridan isn’t old enough to remember hearing of the women who fought in the Vietcong – just googling around finds:
“It was common knowledge among American soldiers in Vietnam that women were sometimes brave and even ferocious fighters for the North. Now at last in Sandra Taylor’s fascinating Vietnamese Women at War this story has been told in depth …. this war for liberation from foreign oppressors also liberated Vietnamese women from centuries of Confucian influence that had made them second-class citizens … Communism’s promise of freedom from those strictures influenced their involvement in the war, and also shares the irony that their sex gave them an advantage in battle or subterfuge over Western opponents blinded by gender stereotypes”
Oh, this looks like a fun game.
Women in Eltham? Nah. Elsewhere in the metropolitan area, sure.
Women as otolaryngological consultants? Nah. Thoracic surgeons, sure.
Women as specialist pasty chefs? Nah. But as everyday cooks for the domestic setting, sure.
Penguins as a sandwich filling? Nah. In a small glass, on the rocks, sure.
Nor has he heard of the 6 million women in the Red Army during WW2.
I believe, I could be mistaken, that the famous photo of the Nazi flag being taken down from a building after the Battle for Berlin was won by the Soviets, was of a combat group that was led by a woman, Major somebody or other from lousy memory.
Doubtless some historian could provide details or correction.
Here, found this after trying google.
” But it was another fortnight before Soviet troops hoisted the red flag over the Reichstag and over the Reich Chancellery – a woman did that, Major Anna Nikulina of the 9th Rifle Corps.”
I forgot about this before.
About 20 years ago a work colleague of mine introduced me to her aunty, visiting from then Leningrad where she had lived all her life.
Including spending the 3 years or so defending Leningrad, she was an officer in the Red Army, from the Wermacht during the infamous siege.
She spent most of her time outside the city in the trenches attacking, repulsing, counter attacking etc..
Unfortunately I didn’t have the time nor the language to explore her history in detail but I bet she had some stories that word astonish Sheridan.
War is the criminal expression of men’s stupidity to all other living things.
That women could be “promoted” – or self “promoted” – to the same level of stupidity to actively seek to take part in such criminality, is either the height of feminist ineptitude or male chauvinism having the very last laugh.
Is the nun who sheltered and then imprisoned several thousand refugees in her convent in Rwanda and then let other troops in to kill them, any less of a front-line soldier than the men who did the final slaughtering?
Of course not, and she deserves to be in the jail where I think she presently sits.
But I’d bet that the war mongers (people that plan the logistics of mass killing of people in other lands), now hope to get enough electronic wizardry together so their illusions of grandeur can “project” their madness into those other countries, with minimal use of foot soldiers – men or women.
It’s the body bags coming back here for burial, that makes us squeamish and starts people thinking that any individual conflict is – ah – regrettable.
It is, after all, acceptable diplomacy to see other people’s loved ones killed in other lands, but it does get a trifle more trying when it’s “our” boys and girls doing the dying.
This last federal budget gave some $36 million to pay Boeing to fly drones in Afghanistan and maybe Pakistan. Just think, the people killed collecting petrol from that tanker or those kids at a relative’s wedding might just have been killed as a result of remote controlled weapons, manipulated by a loving father or mother (who most likely had dropped their own kids off to school on their way to work!) sitting at a computer terminal in Florida – and partly paid for with taxes taken out of your last pay packet!
These are the latest – and hopefully the last – generation of front-line soldiers.
Lest we forget – what fools we are.
You can’t have Women in the front lines but what you can have is Women causing less war! By demanding the Earth Women have always refused to see their role in causing war!
Wake Up or forever be laughed at!
I think the difficulty arises because I think maybe many of us men are wired up that way. For instance if 3 men need to storm the pillbox will the male officer be prepared to select the female soldier? Maybe, maybe not? I personally think it would be hard to be perfectly impartial. That may be quite illogical but the pychological bias is so strong. Likewise it should not matter if a male or female soldier is captured by say AQ but I think a female hostage would be of much greater value to AQ. Illogical yes but somehow I think it would burn that much more severely on your conscience if a female soldier was decapitated by AQ. You would also have to deal with perceived bias, would some of the other male perhaps less “chivalrous” troops resent any perceived bias. Again not rational but it could be there. Another dynamic to deal with in life or death situations.
My suspicions with the Red Army examples is dire necessity overcame any squirmishness and ultimately it would for Aust too if God forbid such a severe situation was confronted by us.
Another option might be all female units to largely overcome the above? Maybe it might even be prudent to have some female combat capability in case your enemy deploys females in combat roles and your men struggle with killing women. Again logically if someone is shooting at you you probably shouldn’t get too fussed about their gender but it might be a hard bias to overcome.
I have no objection to women being sent off as cannon, sorry, IED fodder. We should have no hesitation in sending female ADF personnel to Afghanistan to help Karzai impose Sharia law.
Objective this post ain’t.
Points (2)(4) and (7) do the author no favours. Greg Sheridan is many things, including it would seem, more coherent than than the author of this..er… piece.
Steve at the Pub reminds me of Joe Hockey. Anyone else notice a similarity?
No fb, Joe is funny.
I take it that Greg Sheridan has never heard of Nancy Wake.
Had an interesting, if brief, conversation with an RAAF trainer a few weeks back. He said they have a problem with getting women fighter pilots, because women’s eyesight generally isn’t of the standard required. The average woman doesn’t have ability to track movement as well as the average man (which is not fighter pilot standard, of course), due to the different proportions and layout of rods and cones. Women see better than men do in low light, so perhaps they’d make better commandos.
The problem I see with putting women into land-based combat is the high probability of their rape upon capture. I know men can be tortured too, but there is usually a purpose to it. Rapes, I am afraid, would just go on and on until liberation or death. Note that this is not a possibility that the Sheridan considers.
Yes, the possibility of rape is a concern. But I haven’t noticed any great concern about the incidence of rape in everyday life, from politicians, or police, or the judiciary, or the media. It’s just accepted as a fact of life, for women. So I don’t understand why the possibility of rape is suddenly a reason to not allow women into front-line combat roles.
In any case, I assume that the women are all volunteers. Perhaps we could do women the courtesy of behaving as though we think they are autonomous adults, and allow them to make their own choices.
“The problem I see with putting women into land-based combat is the high probability of their rape upon capture.”
Yes, Chookie it is surprising that Sheridan did not come up with this old chestnut. He must have just forgotten. Fact is, if torture is on an enemy mind, sexual assault of males is a possibilty as well. Neither sex can be protected from this heinous crime.
This one is easily and demonstrably false. Women compete in Olympic weightlifting and Powerlifting, both sports based on strength. Kilo-for-kilo I am currently weaker than the two female weightlifters I train with.
And yes, they can lift more than 45kg. Over their heads. In a single explosive motion.
I don’t see the big problem with girls in the front line if they are volunteers. Conscription? I think not.
(8) Women run funny.
If Natalie Portman joined the army and ran about a battle field in the manner that she did during the Star Wars, the enemy would be rolling around their trenches in fits of laughter. But then again, that might offer a tactical advantage.
Interesting, Chookie.
I wonder how long that requirement will remain important, though?
Given that WVR air-to-air combat is on its way out (it’s suicidal with modern missiles) eyesight is likely to be important mainly for air-to-ground – and, again, presumably more and more of that is going to be done using standoff weapons.
That said, the F-35 is highly likely to be the last crewed fighter plane Australia ever buys, so the whole question of what makes a good fighter pilot will likely be a moot one some time in the next few decades.
Women should never be allowed in the tank corps, as that requires small, agile people who are good at multi-tasking, like most men.
Yes, excellent point Vibenna.
And that nice Mr Sheridan…did he mention how difficult it is to provide separate loos for the ladies? And trouser suits? It’s probably difficult to provide something fetching for arm to arm combat.
…and their make-up will run in the heat of battle…..
Great post, Deborah. It’s so satisfying when you happen upon a particularly stupid article that allows so many angles of attack, isn’t it?
SATP, I don’t think you should waste your time defending Sheridan, especially on this topic – he hasn’t a logical leg to stand on.
Sheridan , like most men is totally shit scared of woman.
Perhaps that is why they have spent over 8000 years relegating woman to support status.
Fellers, don’t buy the feminist line that if women were in charge there would be peace.
If women were in charge there would be total war forever.
Huggy.
HB @37: “Fellers, don’t buy the feminist line that if women were in charge there would be peace.”
By jove you are right HB. Women are a violent lot. MUCH worse than men. You only have to check out the statistics:
http://social.jrank.org/pages/1253/Violent-Crime-Gender-Differences-in-Violent-Crime-Offenders.html
Women also like to form violent gangs, and cause mayhem compared with the peaceloving male gangs:
http://peacemaking.suite101.com/article.cfm/differences_in_male_and_female_gangs
Jarrah: #36 I wasn’t defending Greg Sheridan so much as pointint out that his piece was at least coherent and structured, compared to this supposed hatchet piece on him which is neither. All I said was this piece does the author no favours.
I know very little of Greg Sheridan, excepting that I see his name a lot on this site, mainly being sneered at.
I agree with neither his methodology nor his conclusion. However his piece IS coherent, consistent, and is set up to withstand a debate.
Points (2)(4) & (7) in this attempted rebuttal are incoherent (or to be charitable, subjective) and do only damage to the reputation (such as it may be) of the author of this piece.
Point (2) Sneers at even the suggestion of the Israeli army being an example of good practice. The author’s bigotry is stronger than any scholarly ability. For in matters of front line military application it is both very experienced and very successful. This may be quite a lump to swallow among those (in common with the author of above) for whom anti-Israel bigotry overrides the ability to note that the Israeli army is one helluvan example of military good practice (ie, it wins) The Israeli army may be Jewish, it may be top heavy with conscripts, it may be the muscle of a government that it is not “approved”, but for the purpose of this discussion (ie, military front line ability) it is most definitely an example of military good practice.
Point (4). There is nothing that needs to be said about using Hollywood movies as a historical reference, never mind about one who (it would seem) gets their reality from Hollywood.
Point (7) Downright incoherent. Is this point challenging Sheridan’s observation that women are not as prone as men to initating violence, or is it a rant about how Sheridan supports violence against women? Now that the giggling behind the school dunnies is over (see #24,25 & a few others) this point is being downright overridden by commenters (eg #38)
I’ve been away a long time but am not surprised to see that SatB is the same, learned & forgotten nothing, wotta surprise.
RMerkel@2 – I barely managed to read, scan really, the ejaculation to which you linked but one can imagine Sherry growing more sweaty & hot with each convulsive keytap.
This topic is meant to distract us from the fact that one of the avowed missions in Afghanistan, to save the Afghani women from patriarchal sharia law, is an abject failure. It’s a lame attempt to prove that our army is really thinking about the rights of women.
Not a easy topic,to say why not is a sort of stupidity that is the same as conscription.Seeing that equipment and body potential are not today measured by weight carrying,because that would simply be stupid because of the knowledge of how to build muscle on any frame over time,and with advanced nutrient solutions and possible non residue,non habit forming drugs or practices.I think the easiest answer that allows for options is a women’s battalion rather than shared work at the front.That is operationally how you divide the fighter power per number could be sex selected,so women’s emotions and feelings are sourced amongst the fighters for both attack mode and debriefing,rather than say men are the most efficient at denying life of the enemy and must be emulated.Injury and how to deal with it in a war zone would terrorise most thinking adults,so once again another approach maybe needed,because perhaps males carry pain in some circumstance so effectively that it has to be modified and emulated.Are women and men’s gaits so similar in the distributional qualities of carrying weights practically that only slight modifications need to be sourced!?Scotsmen wore kilts in the war zone,similar was traditional among other language religion and national groupings.So you can wave good bye to the skirt stuff,unless a skirt is actually the better option of dress requirements in relationship to fighting.The one real objection I have is a deep sense of wrongness of war being a solution to anything.It then spills into the no side,and I really don’t like the result of the men being killed either as can be seen for the outcome as it is for Iraqi women today.Morally I am yes and no,and I doubt even the happiness if you like of women understanding and being in the role will change my sense of that.If I was in a circumstance making the decision to allow suvh,I would need to explore some areas of human attributes generally and selectively individually,for any death to me in war zones with the non-useful to the dead, “Hero type recognition” seems a folly that becomes a national pastime.I think women should be prepared for anything,wether inside or outside a organised Defense structure,and taking up skills and being adventurous is deeply feminine.How else do they discover they can be even humble mums!?
Elise, I was making a sad attempt to be satirical.
I do however doubt if there is any real gender difference when it comes to the defence of home and hearth.
I vividly remember my partner (quite small and female) expelling 3 hulking young males who had come into our backyard with some sort of home invasion in mind.
I just watched and thought to myself, ” I would not want to be in those guys shoes if she actually catches up with them”.
Huggy
some people on this thread seem to be under the misapprehension that male POWs don’t regularly get raped. Rape has been a weapon of war for a long time, and thought I doubt the numbers of men raped is anywhere near as high as women civilians in conflict, I think it’s highly likely to be much more common than talked about, given that shame would keep most men silent.
Steve at the pub – you have read the words, but not the argument.
Vibena, I have been reading this site for years.
Thus I know the argument: “Greg Sheridan is automatically a wanker” An argument that won’t get traction anywhere but this site.
The “rebuttal” of him above may get a chorus of “hurr, hurr, hurr” on this site, but it most defintely does not amount to any sort of argument against him, only against the credibility (such as it may be) of the person who wrote the piece.
My points are valid, and will withstand more than your false belief that I am some sort of defender of Greg Sheridan.
Eh, what belief? Why don’t you try argument instead of ad hominens?
OK, Steve, let’s take it point by point. What’s incoherent about this?
You focused on the first sentence of the rebuttal, while ignoring the substantive section. And while you’re quite right about the historical successes of the IDF, their recent record is not so crash hot, even talking purely objectively about their front-line ability. See Lebanon, 2006.
But it’s a complete distraction anyway. As other commenters have pointed out, women have served with distinction on front lines throughout history, so Sheridan is shooting himself in the foot bringing it up.
On to the next point, and your failure to actually deal with the criticism that:
What was incoherent or subjective about that? In fact, it strikes at the heart of Sheridan’s own incoherence and wilful blindness. Deborah may have to take her knowledge of military culture from movies, or it may have been a way to get the point across to the Larvatus Prodeo readership who do the same, I don’t know. What I do know, from talking to my friends in the army, is that the no-man-left-behind ethos is very, very strong. That’s probably why it’s portrayed as such in the movies!
Last point:
Again, I see no incoherence here. Your questions as to the meaning are the puzzlers, as I can see nothing to support them. Deborah simply shows up Sheridan’s fantasy about women-on-a-pedestal as specious, self-serving crap, and does it well.
I’m with everyone else – a spot on post, even if, given the silliness of so much of the article, one with a certain shooting fish in a barrel quality. Sheridan as Paul Norton points out can do a lot better than this.
Particularly pleased to see the naturalistic fallacy put in its place. Can we all bear that in mind for future climate change threads too please. There is no more reason for the “natural” climate to be regarded as a state all variance from which should be resisted than there is for the “natural” view of women’s place in war to be so regarded.
HB @43, I suspected you were possibly being satirical. My reply was in similar vein.
“I vividly remember my partner (quite small and female) expelling 3 hulking young males who had come into our backyard with some sort of home invasion in mind.”
One of my father’s more entertaining stories is of a similar event.
Many moons ago, they got back one evening from a dinner party with friends, to find their bedsheets being loaded out of the bedroom window, filled with household belongings. My father charged into the house to accost the invader, and my mother ran through the garden to collect the belongings being dumped out of the window.
On seeing an irate male houseowner, the invader lept out the window with his latest bundle of booty. My mother, 6 or 7 months pregnant, gave chase around the house. The foolish man didn’t drop his load of booty, which gave an furious, pregnant woman the advantage. She caught up with him, threw him to the ground, and sat on him! She had a weight advantage at the time, to say nothing of the surprise factor…
My father usually has trouble finishing the story due to laughter.
Luckily, at this point, my father and a neighbour arrived on the scene in the garden, before the hapless invader gathered his wits and managed to escape, or worse. My brother was born, none the worse for wear, a couple of months later.
Apparently the female of the species tends to a strenuous defence of home turf.
Elise, we are in heated agreement here.
I don’t buy the gender difference argument at all. Women and men do what they have to do in any circumstance.
Sooner or later both genders are going to need to refuse to fight for the imperial vanity of our rulers or we will become yet another of the failed civilisations. This time it will be global extinction.
Huggy
BRAIN FART ! now that is a great name for THIS blog instead of labiatus poostuff.
Feel free to direct this comment to the know nothing Helen….your such wankers…
So are we to take it that you disagree with the post in some way then Bogan Genius?
Or is it just Helen, who would seem to have had nothing to do with it?
From the spelling this appears to be a valediction.
However, BGoT doesn’t appear to know how to format a letter properly.
Fascinating. What I am interested in here, is which of Cletus’s heads is doing the speaking? Can anyone tell me?
BGoT, I feel you’re pain, really I do. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that most of the world are such…wankers from where you sit. Its very frustrating when your the only one whose not a wanker, but your the only one who is party to this revelation.
Re women, hearth & home etc, I was out bush one time when one of my NCOs was contacted about an attempted burglery at his house. His wife had called the police to tell them that the burgler was half way in the kitchen window. There was some consternation, until it became apparent that he would not be progressing any further for some time.
Cricket bat. Back of the head.
I’ve just come back from Israel, where for the record I met several females who are members of front line combat units. I think they still have a tendency to send the boys in first, for the same public opinion reason.
One wonders how many of the men who argue that women aren’t tough enough for combat ever sat with a woman during natural labour and came away thinking that it wasn’t more physically demanding that anything men do.
I said to senior dopey women in my wifes education lesbian faculty 12 nyears ago at a certain cement brick university in queensland australia that ÍT WAS PERHAPS AbouT TIME THAT WOMEN WERE GIVEN A CHANCE TO KILL OTHER FOREIGN WOMENS CHILDREN AND MAIM AND HARM THEM SEVERELY –?”
AW: Approved for the lulz