I know there are people who will disregard my objections as simple chauvinism.
They aren’t.
I have worked for and with smart, talented, hardworking and dedicated women. Women who could think on their feet, make decisions and would inspire me to work my tail off for them.
But this has nothing at all to do with that. There are people, male and female, who insist that 18 year old men and women can work together as if there is no such thing as sexual interaction, that sex can be regulated away.
Secondly, men and women simply are not the same physically. They aren’t. Women, on average, cannot achieve the same level of physical output for the same duration that men can.
There is a reason that there is a separate category in marathons for men and women. Women cannot compete at the same level as men. In the Boston Marathon, the first woman finished nearly twenty minutes after the first man, and would have come in 28th place overall.
I find it interesting that they do not list the results for men and women together at the official site, and as far as I can tell, there is no option to do so, but I could simply be missing it. But year after year, you hear female athletes analyzing the results and saying that “...with more women running marathons, eventually women will compete at the same level as men...”
Really? They are living in a fantasy world, and they put things like this in newspapers. A lot of people fall for it hook, line and sinker. I am no marathoner, but I will say that when seconds, or fractions of seconds separate first and second place, twenty minutes is insurmountable, no matter how many women run in marathons or how the numbers increase each year. If they take steroids, they might close it up a bit.
And marathons are simply one example. In the military, look at the SEALS, Delta, and the Rangers. It is no coincidence there are no women, or at least women who could get there on the same path the men do. Those units are the top of a pyramid, and in the former selection process, only the top physical and mental performers could clear the bar. If true that the Rangers have begun accepting female candidates, they are finished as an elite unit in the niche they currently occupy. They may be better than a standard infantry unit, but they won’t be the same as the Rangers we have seen, and they certainly won’t have the same mission capability.
They will likely all get to wear nice Ranger berets, though, and wear the snappy Ranger tabs and badges that will label them as elite troops.
Lastly, logistical issues ranging from pregnancy to habitation may not seem like much to some people, but that is only going to be true if they DO treat men and women exactly the same in the field with respect to equipment and habitation. Apart from if that is a good idea or not, does anyone think that is going to happen?
Raise your hands if you think it will.
It WON’T happen, that is guaranteed. But you know what? Nobody will notice. In 5 years after women join the Rangers/SEALS/Delta, you will hear talking heads in and out of the military who will say things like:
NEWS ANCHOR/POLITICIAN/MILITARY COMMANDER: “When we integrated women and homosexuals into these units, people were saying it was going to be a disaster, that it would hurt mission capability, morale and such. We are more capable now than we have ever been, and have the moral buttress of diversity and equality. Remember how they said the same thing about the military when blacks were going to be integrated back in 1946? Same result here...the world didn’t end, and it won’t. It was the right thing to do, and we can all be proud of the diversity we now see.”
And you know what? There will be no dissenting opinion.
The next time this comes up is when we go head to head with an opponent who is going to make our elite units use every single ounce of capability to complete a mission, and it isn’t going to happen. We may find ourselves in a situation where we don’t control the air or the sea. Our avenues of supply have been cut off, and our units have to do with their brains and brawn and endurance to win. And we are going to lose, and lose badly.
We will lose badly, because our opponents won’t be stupid enough to do what we have done to our military.
For an analogy, think of what might have happened on Edson’s Ridge on Guadalcanal in 1942 if we had women integrated into those Marine units fighting the Japanese. That is your answer.
But hey. Nobody is going to read this thread or do anything about it. I am a dinosaur and don’t know any better, can’t change with the times...it is embarrassing for some to even read a post like this one. And if anyone even gave a rat’s patootie anymore, they might get angry and attack me personally.
But they won’t. This fight is over.
I agree. The back flips necessary to accommodate the very few olympic quality females seems to not be worth the added value they would bring.
Just as we don’t permit below the 5% and above the 95% in height, as we don’t want to redesign all the equipment, and the added value of such people wouldn’t justify the cost of redesign (and the dead weight loss associated with making every tool lighter and every tank bigger).
I am a woman; I read your thread; I agree with every word.
...and have it rung any more true...
Best. Post. On. The. Subject. Period.
My comments on another thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2894717/posts?page=28#28
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2894717/posts?page=27#27
The very bottom line for the military is its goal is to win - everything else is secondary, if that. Failure to win can mean the destruction of the Republic and everything it has stood for. To win you need to cast out the liberal drivel that “we are all equal”. Liberals want to be inclusive and deal with feelings.
The only feelings that the military deals with is the feelings generated by a 7.62 x 39 mm round hitting you or an IED going off a few meters away.
My bottom line - if they can keep up with the men then more power to them. But, there will be absolutely NO changes tot eh current training programs to accommodate females.
IIRC, the army regs state that women, when in the field, MUST be afforded the opportunity to shower no less than once every 3 days. To my knowledge, there is no corollary reg for men (they shower when they get done, or when they have a chance).
The regs for females are there due to hygiene issues turning into medical ones.
This, alone, is an insurmountable problem.
Nobody is going to read this thread or do anything about it. I am a dinosaur and don’t know any better
**********
Great post. You are not a dinosaur and I agree with you. I am female and I’ve had enough of the femnazi nonsense.
I agree with you but the marathon was probably not a good choice to compare performances. Of course men run it faster but women compete closer than just about any other race.
Events which require strength and power are where men would totally dominate. In fact a very good high school boy could beat the women’s world record in just about all events. Some people don’t realize that women throw lighter weight objects in events such as shot put and discus. Also women run the 100 meter hurdles while men run the 110 meeter over higher hurdles.
I too have watched some of the elite military units on TV while they trained. You are correct, there are no women who could pass these tests if they had to compete on equal basis. Of course they would make them easier and then say women can do anything men can do.
Oddly enough, I think there are some women who could be effective fighters in a lot of situations. they are clever and capable of killing.
All will be returned to normalcy, eventually.
And God is in charge.
The problem is that we, as a nation, don’t want to win, we don’t want to do our best, and do a perfect job. It isn’t our focus, or our reason for being anymore.
Now it’s all good enough, and often, not good enough, but who will ever know?
The tide will turn soon, since these things cycle, and we have an economic collaspe coming which should again produce people who are conditioned to try to win, since they have had to in order to survive.
When the tide turns, we’ll have an opportunity to see a lot of this over-reaching stupidity turned back. I hope we take advantage of it.
My daughter could take almost anybody apart. Repeat - "almost".
Outstanding post. You covered all the bases.
Too bad our military and civilian leaders are too stupid to see as clearly as you.
It is utterly unnecessary. We have a population of 300+ million, of which there are MORE than enough qualified males to fill the current slots.
Our armed Forces is small, elite and the Army is comprised of less than 1,00,000 personnel. There is no logical reason to have has a significant portion of that relatively small force a group which is not required to meet the same physical standards as the men, which BY LAW cannot be deployed to missions which require them to directly engage, close with, and destroy the enemy or to be plugged in as emergency replacements for those who do, which requires a seperate logistic train to include seperate housing, and whose injuries and death impact civillian and military morale in ways that the deaths of males WILL NOT DO, at least untill the baleful effects of cultural marxism continue to corrode the civillizational impulse that has always attempted to mitigate the horrific effects of war against women and children.
Those of us who have seen the grim horror at the sharp end of infantry combat (as I did in a Mech Infantry outfit in Vietnam) are concerned at the rhetoric of many of those pushing the women in combat agenda. Daily we are regaled by the sight of 110 lb. women routinely beating the stuffing out of 250 lb male behemoths in choreographed entertainment fantasies like Buffy the vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, Tomb Raider and the Matrix Reloaded. We all listened breathlessly to the initial (later revealed as inaccurate) reports of brave little Jessica Lynch mowing down hordes of Iraqis.
It is only natural that with this continual barrage of opinion shaping that an attitude will begin to form that women are just as generally capable of participating in infantry combat as men are, with a comensurate erosion of the rationale for excluding them in the first place.
This is not to say that women can not serve in positions that enhance military capability, they are already serving in them, and serving well and honorably. It was Nazi Armament Minister Albert Speer who cited the German failure to mobilize their women in the manner that the Allies did in WWII as a significant factor in the Nazi defeat. In situations involving large scale mobilization, they are essential. (Don’t forget that the Soviets only did it because of the hugely staggering quantity of casualties that they suffered, on a scale that we can scarcely concieve of) That is not the case now as most personnel requirements could be met with the available pool of qualified males. Today, the issue is clouded by feminists and their societal influence ranging from lefist cum Marxist to liberal gender equity advocates. All too often combat readinesss, morale and unit cohesion is secondary to remaking the military institution into one which advances a radical social agenda. The decision to incorporate such large numbers of women into today’s military is a political decision, not one of military necessity has was the case with the Soviets during World War II.
The question must be asked as to what would happen should we face an enemy that could inflict the sort of casualties on us has was the case during the fighting in northwest Europe in WWII? The United States Army was forced to comb out military personnel who had been assigned to the Army Specialized Training program as technical personnel (aircrew, radar operators, etc) and convert them to infantry to replace the staggering losses. Since 14% of the Army is not deployable to such duty (women) this does not bode well for such an eventuality. While we can continue to pray that we will never again face an enemy that will be able to attrite us as the German and Japanese Armies did, we MUST not plan as though it will never again happen. The current COIN/Anti-Terrorist wars as they are presently playing out ARE NO TEST OF THIS PROPOSITION.
Many commentators are relentless in their determination to ignore the considerable body of factual evidence indicating that the present policy of sexual intergration is inconsistent with certain vital forms of combat readiness. Study after study (reinforced by my 20 yrs of anecdotal observation in the active duty military and NG) highlight the physical unsuitability of most women for the tasks of the combat soldier, and often even the support soldier. My personal observations include the inability to change the tires on military vehicles, clear routine stoppages on M60 medium MG’s and .50 cal HMG’s, carry heavy loads any appreciable distances at necessary speeds, lift and evacuate casualties, and an inordinate disposition to injury. The reason that the military adopted “dual physical training standards” was to ensure politically acceptable numbers of women, since 40-60% of them would be washed out if they were required to meet male physical training requirements.
We won a World War with 16 million people in uniform against the most formidable battlefield enemies that we have ever faced, with half of today’s population and over 400,000 dead, WITHOUT the need to place women into direct combat roles. This reasoning is being impelled by radical feminism and Cultural Marxist elements who care nothing for the combat effenciency of the Armed Forces, but are concerned with fundamentally transforming and undermining one of our most vital institutions.
I am a woman, I totally agree with you, and the only thing that makes me angry is that the military is being dragged down to the lowest common denominator along with every other institution in American life, vital ones like law enforcement, firefighting, academia, pop culture, etc and militant feminism has so much to do with ALL of that.
Back to the Rangers-just for starters, the discrepencies in upper body strength are unbridgeable. The standards affected by that one factor will have to be lowered, just as swimming requirements in law enforcement have had to be lowered or dropped for blacks. Just as the race industry cries about “cultural bias” in iq tests, when results show that minorities actually do better on the parts of these tests which could be said to have “cultural influence”, that being one of the easiest things to learn when they LIVE in this culture. The parts of the tests based on more pure cognition are where the problems come in, but admitting that wouldn’t support the agenda that everyone in general is equal in iq, it’s just that the tests are “rayciss”. Funny how the truth is the exact opposite of what they claim!
Well, one more nail in the coffin for the military (Obama wants to “equalise” the SEALS also, a “minority recruitment drive” is supposed to be in effect, as if the opportunity for anyone who can make the cut based on the standards already in place hasn’t always been there). What do the PC, AA, equality-uber-alles hustlers do, when minorities just don’t want to put themselves through that degree of rigor? Why, they lower the bar so that those who formerly couldn’t have made the cut can get the “prestige” white males have for enduring it, without having to actually BE the best. So long as they get a certificate that SAYS they are just as good, who cares if they didn’t actually have to BE THE BEST?
We might be dinosaurs, but we’ve seen enough life to know reality from a reality TV show.
Half of American can’t tell the difference. Fantasy = reality to them.
The punishment for this foolishness will be severe, when the butcher’s bill must be paid, in another Normandy, Iwo Jima, Chosin Resevoir, Hue City, Mogadishu, etc.
Mrs. BE isn’t home at the moment, but I can say with great assurance that she will emphatically agree with each and every point you made.
God help our military men who have to carry this burden.
It won’t even go that far: The best case (if this absurdity comes to pass) is that the standards will not change and the first female to LOM will sue the army (with the help of her local ACLU) because the “deck was stacked against her”. To that argument, I respond, “No Sh!+. It’s a physiological fact”
In a very worst case, the standards are changed to accommodate the masses and the Regiment becomes a SIGNIFICANTLY LESS THAN elite unit taken seriously by NO ONE. To that end, all will likely hear the sound of Robert Rogers rolling in his grave.
When I joined the army as an 18 year old recon scout, I talked treason like any other good joe about how when “WE” are in charge, things are going to get right.
27 years later, “WE” ARE in charge and things have gotten even more politically correct - from both the outside and the inside. It is disappointing to say the least.
I find myself being grateful that I’m much closer to the end of my career than to the beginning.
I went to Ranger School as a young man. I walked in a hearty 175 pounds and walked out at 138 but, I walked out with a tab and I’m both proud and lucky.
I’m not sexist (in fact, I’m a BIG fan of women..a BIG fan.)but a woman at Ranger School and a woman in the Regiment is as absurd a concept as a man winning the Miss America contest.
I am disappointed it has come to this. The United States Army at its highest levels, is spineless.
RLTW.
For those who don’t know; “Rangers Lead The Way”
So, in short I agree with you but then again I don't. ; ) I know just like a woman. Can't make up my mind.
Any thinking person who understands A) military history and B) male-female differences in physical ability has to agree with you.
A) is smaller than you think, and B) has been suppressed by political correctness.
Let us hope sanity prevails. With the current Administration, I expect little. Not sure about what happens with a Romney Administration.
Great reply.