Women In Combat Roles Face These “Disproportionate Medical Risks”

Are recruiters, particularly in the Army and Marines, lying to (or at least misleading) young women who they try to recruit into military service? That’s a question which is asked and answered in the LA Times this week by two people who should know. Julie Pulley is a former West Point graduate Army captain and Afghanistan veteran. Rear Adm. Hugh P. Scott was a Navy medical officer and is an expert in medical physical standards. They discuss the current push to drive up the number of women going into combat roles and the unique stresses which the demands of those duties put on the bodies of women. The difference between the genders in this scenario is significant and worrisome.

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The first example is based on nothing more than the fact that men produce a lot of testosterone, leading to larger hearts and more muscle mass.

M]ales have 40% greater aerobic capacity, and higher endurance compared with females. Women’s smaller hearts require more blood to be pumped each minute at a given level of exertion because they have less hemoglobin in their blood to carry oxygen.

These differences will put women at a distinct disadvantage in newly opened infantry jobs, where they will be expected to carry 100-pound packs routinely, or in armor jobs, where they will have to load 35-pound rounds again and again. If you don’t like the rather basic argument of “guys are just stronger” you might want to consider that the different body designs between the genders. These leave women open to more injuries and long term health problems if they have to endure that much physical stress over long periods of time.

Pelvic floor injuries are another gender-specific danger for female troops. Studies have found heavy load bearing and paratrooper training can contribute significantly to urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse among women.

Many of the consequences of taking on additional combat roles won’t be obvious until years later. Just ask Marine Capt. Katie Petronio, who wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette of muscle atrophy, endurance problems, weight loss and infertility she considers the results of two combat deployments. Women have proved themselves in combat, Petronio said, but in the most physically demanding roles, can they endure “and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?” There are more risks, such as bone marrow loss among women who take common hormone treatments to avoid menstruation while deployed. All of the wear and tear which does a number on the men to begin with is multiplied in women over long periods of time. The reason? I know that the SJW crowd absolutely despises hearing this, but as these expert author reaffirm for us yet again… “men and women are not the same.” Those difference are wonderful in so many ways and are woven into the fabric of human society around the globe, but they also put women at a severe disadvantage in certain high stress, physically demanding activities over the long run.

But even as the military pushes to drive up their enlistment numbers for women, actively recruiting female athletes out of high school and college, nobody at the recruiting stations are issuing them warnings about this. That’s despite the fact that the Pentagon has published studies examining these gender differences and the likely medical complications.

By way of full disclosure, I’m one of those old dinosaurs who doesn’t want women in combat to begin with and I’ve made no secret of that here in the past. But if we are going to have to go down this road (and it looks too late to turn back now) we should at least be honest with the young women who volunteer for this dangerous duty. If the training and rigors of deployment are posing a particular medical threat to them they should be going into it with their eyes open.

Agree but not likely to happen. The blame for all this lies squarely at the feet of the feminist movement which tried to convince everyone that men and women are the same, except for the fact that women can give birth.

I remember reading an article in sports illustrated in the late 80s that explained why female basketball players had more knee injuries than male basketball players. It was because men’s legs go straight down from the hips but women’s go slightly out to help with childbearing. There have been plenty of other studies showing how women suffer more injuries, and more serious injuries, from sports than men because of biological differences.

I spent 21 years in the military, two different branches, both active and reserve, as enlisted and officer, in combat and combat support units. In my opinion women should be in administrative units and medical units, all basic trainings should be sex segregated, and the service academies should be male only.

Obviously women usually aren’t as strong as most guys - plus the sexual attractions, etc. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

However - I’m relating this in defense of our young neighbor - a female medic. She had been in Iraq early on and was a medic on a base. Treating mostly locals. She requested to be out with our guys so she could help them instead. She finally prevailed. Although I think the main reason she went out with them was so she could treat the women in the villages - “winning the hearts and minds” thing. But also taking care of her guys.

But - she must have been good out in the field, she did two or three more tours, and always was out on patrols and requested by many.

I recall her mom asking her if she was ever in any fighting.

“Mom - I’m okay.”
“But do you ever come under attack??”
“Um - we’re in Afghanistan.”

*Some* women can shoot, like anyone. Shooting well does not a sniper make. Snipers are often dropped off miles away from their chosen overwatch spot and hoof in, carrying all the shit they need on their backs. I have a friend who did 2 tours in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan — in his words, the military is “strung the f### out.” He was trained as a FiSTer, but ended up spotting for snipers on more than one occasion because there just weren't enough grunts on the ground and somebody said “hey look at him, he's trained to observe and spot shit. Use him.” Walk miles in the heat with 100 pounds of gear, dig a hole, live in it with 2 other dudes for 3 days, 7 days, whatever, rinse-repeat. Putting women in some combat positions thinking that they won't end up overlapping with duties they were never intended for is foolhardy. Further, snipers are not some rarefied breed who always get to sit comfortably in a nest and pick off bad guys from a safe distance, then fly off in style in their own personal chopper pick-up. They toil as hard as any other grunt, and need to be able pick up and carry a buddy who just had his leg blown off just as quickly as any other grunt. I have no military experience, I'm just repeating, verbatim, what I've been told by 3 guys -- my dad with a Combat Action Ribbon, my friend and former boss with a Combat Action Badge, a purple heart and permanent disability, and a coworker with a Ranger Tab and a Combat Infantryman Badge. Make of it what you will.

The soviets were willing to use women in combat, including as snipers. They were also willing to attack the enemy with unarmed human waves. The Israelis tried putting women in combat units. They rolled that back, now the only *combat* units Israeli women can serve in are the border guard battalions...More intense than the Us Border Patrol, I assume, but not frontline grunts in the least.

It bears mention that Admiral Grace Hopper, AKA “Grandma Cobol,” was the source of the Y2K scare.

What has been called a “sniper” in different eras has been radically different. “Sniper” originally was a tag given to serving British officers who hunted snipe while posted to the crown jewel in the British Empire, India. For the better part, people who in the past were called “snipers” were just marksmen, skilled sharpshooters who had the home court advantage. So they were given a rifle with better-than-average precision and told to go die for god and country. If they got killed it was no great loss because nobody counted them an integral part of the regular force anyway.

The Nazis created the world’s first “professional” snipers. But for some reason, after WWI and the blanket vilification of the Germans, not many countries followed the Nazi example, least of all the Israelis. And no one else focused on making the sniper a professional military occupation until the War in Vietnam, when the US military, spearheaded by a Marine captain by name of Ed Land, rewrote the textbook. So whatever Dr. Ruth was, it came nowhere near the current incarnation of a “sniper.” Sex notwithstanding, the woman is only four-foot-seven. Even when she was only 20 years of age, how far do you suppose she could have humped a 40-lb ruck in a day, plus her rifle, six liters of water and a week’s rations?

The military doesn’t — CAN’T — operate on exceptions. It HAS TO operate on generalities because — especially with an all-volunteer force — the military doesn’t choose the soldiers, the soldiers choose the military. And the trajectory of military recruitment always runs antipodean to the economy. Economy gets bad, enlistment gets good. Economy gets good, enlistment gets bad. Which tells you oodles about the nature of the ‘average” recruit.

If you have two arms suppliers and 90% of the guns one builds are combat effective, but only 10% of the guns the other one builds are combat effective, logic dictates that you don’t buy an equal number from both, then take the time and the trouble to weed out the non-hackers, you only buy from the 90% guy.

That’s why men are accepted by default, because we know from past history that 90% of them can hack it in the infantry. And for the 10% of women who also might be able to hack it, ...too bad, so sad. The military operates on the principle of the lowest common human denominator. And you ain’t it.

Men have no choice. If you’re selected for the infantry, you go infantry whether that was what you wanted or not. So what’s it do for morale if women are allowed in infantry, but only by choice? That makes them “privileged,” a class above. Contrary to the good order and discipline of the service.

And they still only have to get knocked up to get out of their enlistment. Because pregnancy is the ONLY self-inflicted medical condition that comes with a guaranteed honorable discharge (if you want it)

In a saner era, a woman in the US military, when deployed to the field, had to be offered the opportunity to take a shower ever other day. OTOH, a man could remain in the field until eternity plus a thousand years and there still was NO MANDATORY shower opportunity. This was a concession to the fact that a woman’s hygienic needs are more complicated than a man’s. Women also were excluded from certain training activities that involved prolonged immersion in water deeper than the crotch. This is because God or nature (pick one) gave women a urethra a fraction of the length of a man’s, so water-borne bugs and contaminants have far less difficulty crawling into a woman’s bladder and producing a condition that renders her UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY combat ineffective.

Most undeniably, the economics just don’t make sense. If a woman were equally combat effective, it still would only make sense if they cost the same to field and maintain as a man. But they don’t. Without women, your quartermaster doesn’t have to stock brassieres and panties and feminine hygiene products. Not to mention weird sizes in uniforms and boots. And men soldiers tend to visit their gynecologist far less frequently than a woman. In fact, a woman’s medical maintenance costs just about double what a man’s does. There is no justification for the added expense unless they are MORE combat effective than men, when in fact the opposite is true.

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