Women in Combat

Warning: This post may offend people

Full Disclosure: I have a niece currently serving in USN

Recently the pentagon released a statement regarding the policy about women serving in combat. I have to say flat out that I don't believe women should serve in about 70% of military career fields.  If you talk honestly with any man that has served in the last 30 years of the military they will admit that physical standards were lowered in the 80's to allow women to serve. The truth is that if those standards were kept in place, most of the women currently in the military wouldn't have made the cut.  Unfortunately this lowering of standards also allowed a lot of men in the military that would not have made it also, but that isn't what this post is about.

My point of view comes from a lot of experiences, for one thing I am the fifth daughter born to a rancher that didn't have any sons. I married a career military man.  I work in a career that is predominantly (around 75%) male. Finally, I am tired of pretending there aren't any emotional or physical differences between males and females.

When I was growing up, my Dad never told me I couldn't do something just because I was a girl. In fact the only thing he didn't allow me to do, was go to the Father's and Son's Outing (I still have emotional scars).  I rode all day, broke steers to the lead, drove balers, pulled calves on cold February nights and unloaded hundreds of pounds of feed. Never once did my Dad say, "No, your a girl."

My career is dominated by men, mostly because women don't have much interest in working in the field. The truth is there are a ton of mechanics, electronics, pipe fittings, and hard work.

When I married Scott his AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) was electronics, he was working on AWACS planes in Iceland. He had some troops that he worked with that were women, they couldn't lift the toolboxes they needed to do the job.  I know that sounds like a trivial thing, but they had been trained and were receiving the same rate of pay as my husband. This was my first glimpse that maybe the battle of the sexes wasn't exactly what the feminists of the 70's promised.

Over the next 10 years I saw more examples of female incompetence, mostly because under the threat of discrimination these women were able to achieve more than their more competent counterparts.  Now, I'm not saying that every woman I came in contact with was unable to do their job, but the ugly part of the government is that quotas are a part of life there. Some career fields women can compete in and thrive, but combat is not one of them. The physical aspects alone are simply to demanding to allow 99% of the women currently serving. See, I know how the military works, they will lower the standards to allow more women to make the grade and as a result more men will be placed in danger.

Did you know for instance that now in basic training recruits are allowed to carry a red card during boot camp. In the event that a TI gets in their face, they show the red card and are allowed to get the TI to back off.  I'm sure enemy combatants will respect the red card. 

The harsh and beautiful reality is that women and men are physiologically and emotionally different.  Try as we may to make the sexes one giant homogeneous mix....we aren't.  I for one am glad, I wish we would just be honest to acknowledge the differences. Women don't belong in combat.