I appreciate your son’s service, as well as your view from a woman’s perspective. I served in a fairly demanding combat field (jet pilot) and had enough cross-training and exposure to infantry that I felt I could have done it, but chose not to. Supporting grunts with high explosives from above was my challenge of choice.
I have no doubt that a small percentage of women could set out from the get-go to be infantry Marines, condition themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally to be grunts, and do it at least adequately. Extreme combat conditions being the exception rather than the rule, the very few to succeed in training (The Basic School hasn’t passed any infantry women so far)might very well have successful careers, at least for a while if other life interests superceded their desire to be combat grunts.
But exceptions to the rule don’t mean this is a good policy for all women. Upper body strength, stamina under duress, long-term strength when wounded, and aggressive instinct are all natural factors and, thank God, women are different from men. Also, they don’t chew/spit and try to out-fart their buddies.
TC
I don’t think the military or women think this is a good policy for all women, just as it doesn’t work for all men. Incidentally, the average man farts 14 times a day, and guess how man times the average woman farts (14). Incidentally, eating yogurt drastically reduces the stink factor. As I discovered with great gratitude when I first gave hubby some yogurt.
While I never had any great desire to enter the military myself, being only 5’5”, 123 lb. when young, after a summer spent helping my family move at 16, furniture, many boxes of books and 4 tons of lumber pop had salvaged for projects, I took the physical fitness test at my new school and was the most fit girl of 150. My son was in a high school ROTC Rangers unit, and I noticed that most of the guys had strong aggressive mothers, including me. I never encouraged my son to go into the military, but he liked it. He came out for a few years but could not find a job he liked. I asked him once what the problem was. “Well,” he said, “I like getting up at 6 am and running 5 miles.” I could see his point and after a while his Reserve commander talked him back in. He is almost finished with his 20 now.