krorvik wrote:If you should take the (yes, sexist) position that women can't fight or fly, you're not only wrong - you're willingly reducing the capabilities of your forces.
Please don't.
The ship has already sailed on Female pilots. I think there are certain positions women can handle. next, its not "sexist". its not sexist to point out basic biological
differences that generally keep women in second place on the battlefield. (keeping in mind second place is dead last.) in the Orwellian PC 21st century We are equal yet, different. the same, yet diverse-- Well guess what? Differences are real things. You can't have equality and diversity because one part of diversity may well be superiority.
But as someone who in a groundside Combat arms MOS, no they can't fight as well as men can. This should be painfully obvious (for some women it literally is). You'll notice for example many pro, college, olympic, and competitive sports are not integrated. yet a battlefield should be? And its been proven many times over and payed for with blood sweat and tears.
If you really want to get into "reducing the capabilities of your force" I can site tens of thousands of cases of men getting embroiled with women in the military and its lead to pregnancy, divorce, discharge, criminal investigations, charges, endless sexual harassment briefings, s3x, scandals, s3x scandals, fraternization, double standards, STDs, degradation of morale and unity, rape, massive clamp downs on everything from hazing to P0rn, stressed and dismissed and exhausted leadership, double standards across the board, increased medical needs, increased medical costs, increased injuries. I could go on and on, but that's just off the top of my head. Ive seen it. Ive watched it happen. and by and large, and take a deep breath for this:
Ive basically watched over the last 25 years women reducing the capability of our force. creating problems that otherwise wouldn't be there if they weren't there. Leadership gets to deal on daily basis with trying to keep the birds and the bees apart rather than the mission. its like hiring alcoholics to work in your tavern. Gee you don't think that could lead to problems do ya? Do you think you have to watch them like hawks rather than getting your work done?
And thanks to folks hand waiving the issue and taking some "moral high ground" when the equality propaganda hits the rocks of reality, they simply dismiss the real life, everyday problems a lot of policies have help create.
There are tons of books and studies about it, along with tons of anecdotes. I'm not a "sexist" but there are facts that are hard to ignore like women getting knee injuries at 10 times the rate of men, and shin splints to the tune of triple digit million dollars a year. because women are more prone to shin splints alone, and tons of lower body issues in general. Military journals have actually published that women get injured at higher rates than men in military training programs. College (IE civilians) sports programs have also noted the higher rate of injury in female athletes. So all the science we have has come to the same independent conclusion over and over, both military and civilian.
There is a lot of frustration for 4 key reasons:
1. Equality propagandists who when confronted with reality resort to name calling and believe that equality is the highest objective to attain in any endeavor, who use gender or some kind of quota rather than qualifications and performance.
2. Useful idiots (enablers) who blindly follow the notion that equality of the force is the same thing as superiority on the battlefield.
3. The people in the know (like myself) are dismissed as weirdos from a by gone era when we actually have tons of first hand knowledge.
4. The lack of acknowledgment that there are differences. Because there are.
The Army concluded in the 1990s for example that women could indeed be brought up to higher standards, but all training even basic training would need to be increased by several weeks. But the Equality police couldn't have that. IT would give the impression that women took longer to train. So the solution was the lowered standards. Now they could pass training on the same day as the gents, well most of them anyway. The army had concluded that female soldiers were indeed different, and like all soldiers who are falling short need additional help to make the grade and they were denied that in the name of "equality."
Its a real problem. And if you want to call me sexist for pointing out that there are differences (err i mean celebrating diversity!), I would rather be called sexist than be a blind, ignorant fool. If you want to bring out the old sexist name calling, lets save it for those "equal" physical fitness standards, that have different and lower standards for females. talk about sexist!! And wouldn't you know it? even after all these decades of being told women are equal, they still have their own standards, and they are lower than the males. How about that? You would think with them being equality we wouldn't have 2 standards, but here we are. From day 1 of basic training, there are different standards. only 30 percent of female soldiers can pass the male fitness standards. Women soldiers have gotten huge high scores by female standards (300 out of 300) but when applied to the male standard it suddenly becomes a much more average 240 out of 300. We also have example of no-joke physical tasks that literally have lives on the line (stretcher carry, fireman's carry) that women do particularly poorly in
So any who don't be one of those blind fools, there are examples all over the place:
From the report of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces (report date November 15, 1992, published in book form by Brassey's in 1993): "The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer [stress] fractures as men."
Further: "The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:
"Women's aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.
"In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man."
From the same report: "Lt Col. William Gregor, United States Army, testified before the Commission regarding a survey he conducted at an Army ROTC Advanced Summer Camp on 623 women and 3540 men. …Evidence Gregor presented to the Commission includes:
"(a) Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, he found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.
"(c) Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260.
"(d) On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it.
"(e) Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge…."
...My friend Catherine Aspy graduated from Harvard in 1992 and (no, I'm not on drugs) enlisted in the Army in 1995. Her account was published in Reader's Digest, February, 1999, and is online in the Digest's archives.
She told me the following about her experiences: "I was stunned. The Army was a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home. I took training seriously and really tried to keep up with the men. I found I couldn't. It wasn't even close. I had no idea the difference in physical ability was so huge. There were always crowds of women sitting out exercises or on crutches from training injuries.
"They [the Army] were so scared of sexual harassment that women weren't allowed to go anywhere without another woman along. They called them 'Battle Buddies.' It was crazy. I was twenty-six years old but I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself."
Women are going to take on the North Korean infantry, but need protection in the ladies' room. Military policy is endlessly fascinating.
When I was writing the military column, I looked into the experience of Canada, which tried the experiment of feminization. I got the report from Ottawa, as did the Commission. Said the Commission:
"After extensive research, Canada has found little evidence to support the integration of women into ground units. Of 103 Canadian women who volunteered to joint infantry units, only one graduated the initial training course. The Canadian experience corroborates the testimony of LTC Gregor, who said the odds of selecting a woman matching the physical size and strength of the average male are more than 130-to-1.
From Military Medicine, October 1997, which I got from the Pentagon's library:
(p. 690): "One-third of 450 female soldiers surveyed indicated that they experienced problematic urinary incontinence during exercise and field training activities. The other crucial finding of the survey was probably that 13.3% of the respondents restricted fluids significantly while participating in field exercises." Because peeing was embarrassing.
Or, (p. 661): " Kessler et al found that the lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the United States was twice as high among women…" Depression, says MilMed, is far commoner among women, as are training injuries. Et cetera.
The military is perfectly aware of all of this. Their own magazine has told them. They see it every day. But protecting careers, and rears, is more important than protecting the country.
Anyway, for those who wanted supporting evidence, there it is.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/MilMed.shtmlmore from the same author:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/WomenInCombat.shtmlhttp://www.fredoneverything.net/MoreWomenLetters.shtmlI'm not a mathematician, but 1 female performing to the male standards for every 130 males. That does not sound like equality. Which should be around (and its been a while so bear with me) 50-50
Again its Orwellian. one of the weird popcorn moments for us here in the states was the notion that all jobs even combat in the military should be open to women. Lots of folks then started asking question about everything from women having to register for selective service, to domestic violence laws. I was also told repeatedly by the same people that women should be our leaders because they are "naturally more cooperative, more peaceful" but that they were also just as violent and ruthless as the men on the battlefield. Its really darkly funny. I just know I won't let my kid join the military, and I know several other people in uniform who are saying the same thing. For a lot of us that is breaking a 3 or 4 generation streak of military service.