[JohnHuang2]

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Quote of the Day by McGavin999

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[Thorondir]

You got that right. I own a Kung Fu school and my thirty+ years of observation in that arena show that a well trained woman can trash most untrained men, but, given the same training, nearly every man will take her out with ease, unless she is a very unusually large and manly woman. Is is a grave disservice to tell women that they are men. (And it's a lie.)

Just reality folks. Nothing to see here. Move along.

[petuniasevan]

Good article. Poorman is always trying to convince me that I'm stronger than him. HA! He isn't trying to hurt me! Once he ACCIDENTALLY made hard contact. I bounced off a wall and had bruises from my shoulder to my ankle.

The only way a woman is going to best a man in hand-to-hand combat is to employ the element of surprise. If she can kick him just right, he's down. But she may find herself blocked or put in a "hold". With only (on average) 1/3 the upper body strength of men, women have to face the fact that they cannot do as well as men in the realm of physical strength.

[.45MAN]

(((((PING)))))

[JudgemAll]

Well, what is needed is penetrating punches and good situational awareness. Force and speed of men is useful in the former, but also in the latter, because although force can be leveraged against by the oponent's pivot, once hit hard, someone is destablilized and the other has a better situational awareness than the other.

So a woman can damage the situational awareness of a man by striking him first and leveraging out his movements, but in the end this requires higher situational awareness work for her and her lack of strength diminishes her ability to reduce situational of her opponent. Weaker subjects in fact merely touch intead of hit and thus help the opponent get guided. In other words when you touch or hit your opponent, you better have done it hard enough and well placed enough - a forciori when moving.

Strength is not all in combat, a good scalable situational awareness and "operating system" are important to combine forces. However trying to substitute strength with good situational awareness is a gamble, because higher situational awareness work, while being beneficial, is also a greater work load and can make hits ineffective.

[waterstraat]

For the most part, hand to hand combat is irrelevent in todays army.

Very few of todays regular soldiers ever get to do it anymore. I know hundreds of men who were in ww2, korea, vietnam, the gulf war, Grenada, etc, and none of them ever fought hand to hand with the enemy.

I agree that women probably would not qualify to be a navy seal, or a delta force member, but there is no reason to keep them out of the regular army, navy, marines, or airforce.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[yarddog]

It is difficult to rate the inherent deadliness of women.

On the one hand their physical strength is even worse than your illustration. I recall the Air Force did some tests regarding physical strngth of women and the differences were very great. They on average had only 30% of the upper body strength of men, 50% of the mid body strength, but surprisingly, were over 90% as strong in the legs.

One has only to look at the women's world records in track and field to see the vast difference. A quality high school boy athlete can beat the womens world record in most events.

On the other hand, physical strength has little to do with deadliness. If one is talking about one on one physical combat in a model setting, women will do extemely poorly. If you tell 100 men and 100 women they must kill a particular person of the opposite sex within a week using all their wiles, skills and weapon of choice including poison, sex, guns etc., I would bet women would do nearly as well.

[No.6]

Extrapolating MA school practice to modern combat is a bit of a stretch...

... but so is extrapolating a day at the range.

There are many viable roles for women in a sensible military, if you first toss out the "everyone must be exactly equal" PC nonsense and work within reality.

For instance, I don't see one physical reason a woman can't be an effective combat pilot; and this last furball had some if memory serves, including some A-10 pilots.

[Sam Cree]

As far as I can see, most men are not only stronger, but also, faster than most women, though there are always some exceptions. I believe hard muscles, which men more naturally have than females, increase speed.

I used to watch my daughter's high school water polo team play against other schools (don't laugh, this is a very physical sport). The boys' team games always followed the girls' team. You'd think it was a different game, the boys were so much faster and stronger.

I agree with most of what has been said about martial arts, but would also add that a larger man, all things being equal, also has a huge advantage over a smaller guy.

I don't really know who might be better at shooting, my belief is that a more athletic person will usually have an advantage in shooting, that would seem to give an advantage to men, but, OTOH, my mother was a damn good shot and felt comfortable with rifle, shotgun or pistol. She was only 5'3", but I never saw her using small calibers.

[k2blader]

Good article, thanks.

I confess it's fun to fantasize about women being able to kick the crap out of a men.

But in the end, it is only fantasy.

[demosthenes the elder]

have you seen THIS lunacy?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/893571/posts?page=1

[semaj]

I've experience with many different martial arts styles from judo, wrestling, kung fu, shotokan, aikido, and boxing. I weigh about 200 lbs. I've sparred with men & women with advanced belts (brown and black) and have always had to pull back considerably so as not to hurt them, much more than when sparring with men. One thing I have noticed is that a women does have one advantage that a man does not. Wiliness. It can and should be used to full advantage by a women when confronted by a male attacker.

[Lorianne]

The capture of Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson and the fact that a significant percentage of our casualties came from a maintenance company does not support the foolish myth of the American Amazon.

Confused logic alert and math deficiency alert. Most of the personell in the maintenance company were MEN, including most of the ones who are now dead. Most of the ones captured were men as well. Furthermore, the way he worded it makes it sound like he's got something against maintenance companies as he illogically and lamely tries to equate "maintenance company" to two individual soldiers who happen to be women.

Classic Vox Day illogic, though. At least he's dependable.