feh...
Posted on 11/26/2017 7:30:30 AM PST by Olog-hai
The young Army infantry recruits lined up in full combat gear, guns at the ready. At the signal, a soldier in front kicked in the door and they burst into the room, swiveling to check around the walls for threats. “You’re dead!” one would-be enemy yelled out from a dark corner, the voice slightly higher than the others echoing through the building. It was 18-year-old Kirsten, training to become one of the Army’s first women serving as infantry soldiers.
“I want to be one of the females to prove to everybody else that just because you’re a female, doesn’t mean you can’t do the same things as a male,” she said, describing her brother — an infantry soldier — as motivation. “I also wanted to one-up him.”
Kirsten is among more than 80 women who have gone to recruit training at Fort Benning, Georgia, since a ban on them serving in combat jobs was lifted. Twenty-two have graduated. More than 30 were still in training late last month, working toward graduation. […]
The Army’s introduction of women into the infantry has moved steadily but cautiously this year. As home to the previously all-male infantry and armor schools, Fort Benning had to make $35 million in renovations, including female dorm rooms, security cameras, and monitoring stations. …
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
A bad idea all around
Until the women take exactly the same PT test as the men, they are not really competing.
I have seen two women in my life who could take, and pass, the PT test for men of their age group.
I married one of them.
I entered Great Lakes at about 130lbs and left two inches taller and twenty pounds heavier.
And the gang bangers at my old school got real pale when I rode up on the motorcycle I had bought from my earnings.
But it was just a short leave en route, and I did not have the time or heart to look up my old “friends”.
feh...
” just because you are a female doesn’t mean you can’t do the same things as a male.”
You mean like hand to hand combat with a knife or carrying your 200 lb teammate off the battlefield on your shoulder?
I think the discussion was front line infantry soldiers, not of the mechanical skill positions. On the latter specialty field, I agree with you.
During my service time we had the WAC so I have no first hand observations and rely upon common sense regarding the infantry specialty. From my common sense, I feel that upgrading “dorms” including security monitors ( perhaps barracks” would be a better descriptor to the uninformed who wrote this article), to accommodate two separate sexes is a waste of money, time and energy unless of course they are planning on having separate squads based on sex in each platoon. This is insanity on steroids.
The big problem is they will probably get a few real soldiers killed with them, which is the terrible part of this stupid PC experiment.
One-up a man...that is a goal. Let her try to carry a fully armed up wounded man miles to safety.
I was supporting the new Lieutenants entering The Basic School (TBS) for the Marine Corps.
There were a couple of females who showed up and were about 5' 1" or slightly taller and weighed less than 105 lbs (I know because I asked them).
Their Company trainers decided to have the troops stay out in the field for Range Week and they ended up packing 120 lbs packs to march the four miles to the ranges. The two females could not walk the four miles with packs weighing more than 15 pounds over their body weight. They both fell out of TBS.
Preparing the battlefield is going to take on a whole new meaning.
'Kirsten' looks to be about 5'3" to 5'4"...And you'll be carrying more than 68lbs after basic.
How did they make it through officer candidate school in the first place?
They’ll reduce what is carried so that more women can handle the loads, rather than puncture the delusion.
To tell you the truth I am not an expert on the Marine Corps but they may have come right out of ROTC.
In the Air Force we ROTC grads were officers as soon as we graduated and swore in and I think that is the same way it works for all the other Services. OCS is for the folks who earned a degree but did not go through ROTC or the academies.
“I want to be one of the females to prove to everybody else that just because you’re a female, doesn’t mean you can’t do the same things as a male,”
If women can’t make as movers, doing the same job as men do, they shouldn’t be in combat.
And as a woman myself who’s worked in some physical labor jobs, this narrative pushed by the left (who mostly never pick up anything heavier than a book in their entire work lives) is hurting women. For one thing, it’s given men the idea that we are just like them, we just can’t lift quite as much, when actually we are built differently so we really shouldn’t be doing constant heavy lifting or very heavy lifting that we can barely do. This isn’t to say that women can’t do physical jobs and some pretty heavy regular lifting, but that we still need a little more consideration than just having men lift something that we simply can’t.
I worked not long ago in one of those big multi-national American fast food restaurants, and it’s simply ignoring differences between men and women, and women get the worst for it, getting pressured into lifting things regularly that the men complain even about it. But for a man, if it hurts to lift something, he’s still doing a lot more of it with his arm muscles. I researched this, and men on average tend to have twice the amount of arm muscle and can lift three times as much. When we lift things that are too heavy, things like I said that even men complain about, it’s hitting us differently, in different muscles and our bones.
This company isn’t great about thinking of its workers to begin with. It just switched to a product that uses 60-pound boxes, when of course it’s entirely possible not to have boxes that heavy. The men really complain about those, but sometimes they actually leave those boxes so that women are pressured into moving them short distances. From what I’ve seen, they don’t do that intentionally, but just from not realizing that it’s just not the things that a woman absolutely can’t pick up that are an issue, but also that anything with any heaviness is going to feel heavier to us versus what it feels like to men.
I’ve seen things like this in several jobs now over the years, and I’ve seen how it’s harmed women and have experienced that myself. And so much of it comes down to the left wanting to feel like they’ve left their mark by overturning society wherever they can as much as possible.
Many employers are then eager to follow along.
I’m of a different opinion...
If Israeli women can do it, then American women also can.
Regarding carrying 100lbs or 70lbs. Of load.. what? Are we in the Middle Ages? Are we carrying tents like the Romans? That seems to be a problem.. the solution is to modernize, reduce the load. Both men and women will be more agile in combat with a lesser load.
Marines have a different course than ROTC, it is PLC and they have to go through OCS.
There are non-negotiable items that a light infantry soldier must carry depending on their mission. If you go out for a week, you have to carry a weeks worth of food and most likely water, extra uniforms, squad equipment, ammo, sleeping bag, rain gear, etc. Believe me, it adds up.
Typical load is anywhere from 90-110lbs. That includes flak, kevlar, ammunition and your weapon.
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