Maggie's Farm

"Watch this Pentagon official literally joke about lowering standards for women in combat"

In the early 70's the military was ordered by politicians to bring more women into the ranks. At that time they began lowering the standards for women vs men. It was a joke and often talked about by men and women in the military but it was also embarrassing. That is it was openly admitting that women could not meet or even come close to the physical standards. So a second phase began to lower the standards of the men so that the lowered standards for women didn't look so bad. This too became a joke. While the MSM and politicians won't talk about it you can be assurred that every man and woman in the military knows that the women are exempt from meaningful standards.

Why? After all we often hear of women who can run marathons and break records in other sports, so why can't women who choose to join the military meet the historical standards? Some would have you believe that those historical standards are contrived or unnecessary or intentional to keep women out. They are not. Combat has traditionally been physically very difficult and the amount of gear carried has always been heavy yet paradoxically not enough. I have watched recruits, young 18 year old men who weighed 115 or 120 lbs who were able to put on a 90 lb pack and hump it 5 miles while jokng about it. I have also watched women, some who were 115 lbs and others who were physically fit and were 140 lbs, who could not do it. They needed help getting the pack on, they could not carry it a mile never mind 5 miles and they didn't joke about it. For whatever reason your average skinny unathletic 18 year old man can not only physically do more then your average 18 year old woman but they thrive on the challenge and want to do it while the women cannot do it.

In my humble opinion there is only two solutions to the problem of allowing women in combat: 1. Don't do it. 2. If we must do it for political reasons then assign a man to carry her stuff.

There may be some women who can hump 90 lbs all day and drag a 180 lb man to safety once they are injured. A few may even be able to compete in the hand to hand that used to be required for all ground pounders. Lets say that 5% of the women who enlist can successfully meet all the physical and training requirement. Lets say we agree that that 5% deserve to go into combat if that is what they want. So here are the problems associated with that logic:
1. 100% of the men are eligible for combat and will be sent into combat while 95% of the women will not. Period! How does that make any sense? Why would the army or marines want to enlist a group of people who only 5% can be used in combat?
2. Within a year of the decision to allow "those women who can meet the standards" to go into combat the politicians and activists will begin insisting that any woman who "wants to" should be allowed to. This is a slippery slope we have seen it in action for the last 40 years or so.
3. Then there is the problem of letting the 95% of women take the safe jobs. This is how the Navy started with women in the Navy. The on ship jobs went to the men and the women got the shore billets. Then there was no place to rotate the men for their tours ashore. You simply cannot have a system where one class of people get the easy and safe jobs only but is "equal" don'tcha know, and the other class of people are the ones expected to do the job without excuse or exemption, period.

So here is the solution; open the military up to men or women and everyone must meet the same physical standards. Everyone must be assiged to combat or submarines or whatever without regard to gender or what they want. No more safe jobs, no more reduced standards, either you can do the job or you cannot and you WILL be assigned combat based on the needs of the military not on yur gender.