Lis, Arguing for the credibility of G.I. Jane makes you look like a retard. I always love hearing these women that can’t walk the walk talk all of this smack about how women should be allowed into ground combat.
My experience is somewhat limited to TBS, but I remember pretty distinctly that the women with the biggest gripes about not being allowed into combat units were the same ones that folded much like a wet taco with more than 60 lbs on their back. Even the tough one…Ya now, the one that had a better PFT score than me, which was obviously an indicator that she could hang. Once she was issued the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, guess what? She had to pass it off to her male counter parts because she did not have the upper body strength to carry it. This was six months of training, where safety vehicles were never too far away. What happens when you go into combat and she can’t carry her own weight…I suppose it should be spread loaded until we get her into the fight and then the enemy will feel her ferociousness. The same arguments used to exclude minority males? Hardly. The arguments are based of physiological differences between men and women.
Going into ground combat means that you have to bring everything with you – Weapons, Ammo, Food, Water, Equipment. The weight adds up very quickly. Then you have to move from the friendly side to the enemy side, which means moving heavy weight over a distance. If you look at the average man (5’9” 170 lbs) vs. the average woman (5’6” 130 lbs), physiology makes assumptions apparent. Now is where you are going to come in with the feminist argument about this one woman that is out there, the triathlete that benches 300 that can kick my ass. Yes, I will readily agree that there are SOME women out there that would have the potential to be a better infantry officer than a few of the males doing it currently. Yes, many women are stronger than men. Yes, I’ve seen a lot of triathletes that could kick my ass. When you actually break it down, the women that are physically capable of ground combat are few and far between. That combined with the simple fact that very few people (Men and Women) actually want the mission of ground combat means that this one women we are arguing for is statistically rare. Now we factor in the extra gender issues of adding women to the combat units…maybe someday our society can be as it was in Starship Troopers, but unfortunately, it is not.
The question I propose…is it worth our national security to promote equality? Call me stupid, but if congress allows women into ground combat, it doesn’t mean that everyone will be judged on an equal playing field. Politics isn’t that simple. It would create a mess, where either the infantry standards would be lowered or separate standards to provide equal chance for each gender. In the meantime, the ground combat standards, ya know…the ones that involve people shooting each other to death will remain the same.
Now I’m coming across like a raging sexist, which isn’t true. My argument is simply that WAR is not the place for feminists to go ranting about “female power.” That’s all G.I. Jane was.
