[ThunderSleeps]

You are so right. If/when the stuff hits the air recirculating machine, be it in combat, a fire, or other life threatening situation... I want the biggest, meanest, most focused, confident SOB next to me - not some 5 ft 4 one hundred lbs soaking wet I'm-just-here-to-balance-the-demographics person - male or female.

The only time I want that person beside me is when we're running from a bear, then I'm going to trip them... Just kidding!

[HiTech RedNeck]

They have fireMEN not because fires are sexist, but because biology is. The guys are bigger, stronger, tougher. But they pay for that in lives that burn out faster, too. And they’ll never have “woman’s intuition.” Or carry a baby or nurse one. What happened to diversity-is-good anyhow? We all got to be the same?

[Little Pig]

The people who live in the district where she’ll be working will have to hope she is never turned out on an actual fire. If she was part of the crew that showed up at my house, and for whatever reason the crew was unable to contain the fire and/or rescue any trapped persons within, my first action would be a lawsuit against the city for sending non-competent firefighters (the woman) to my house.

It’s kind of the same principle as preferring not to go to a black doctor. You just don’t know if they’re really there on their own merit, or if they were “racially promoted” through affirmative action.

Some jobs have (relatively) arbitrary standards, and waiving them for someone who isn’t qualified just means the paperwork isn’t done as well, or the department isn’t quite as productive. Standards for medical care, or physical standards for jobs like firefighter or soldier, involve actual life-or-death situations where not being able to move a certain amount of weight literally means you’re not qualified for the job. In the Army, for example, it seems to me that the physical requirement is an absolute standard. Either you can do the job or not. Men and women are (theoretically) interchangeable as soldiers, so if 17 pushups (women’s PT standard) is all you have to be able to do to be considered strong enough to do the job, then that’s all *anyone* needs to be able to do. Conversely, if you have to be strong enough to do 40 pushups in order to be qualified to do the job, then *everyone* has to do that many. The notion that it’s some nebulous “percentage of maximum capacity” that is being measured is meaningless, because some peoples’ “maximum capacity” just isn’t enough to do the job correctly.