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  • Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service... We have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent war from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. That is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce.

    "Remarks about the Military Draft" by Margaret Mead (June 1968) as quoted in "Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views" edited by Rhoda Metraux (pp. 35-36), 1979.
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