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Home » Will the Marines lower standards to accommodate women?

Will the Marines lower standards to accommodate women?

The New Neo Posted on by

The NY Post editorial board wonders:

Gen. John Kelly, USMC, is retiring after more than four decades as an active-duty Marine. His “greatest fear,” he says, is that the vast “equal opportunity” pressure for women in combat roles will lead the Pentagon to water down standards…

Defense Secretary Ash Carter last month announced that women will soon be eligible for all combat positions. (They had been blocked from about 10 percent of those posts.)

Yes, Carter also warned that equal opportunity wouldn’t bring “equal participation by men and women in all specialties.”

The reasons are obvious: On average, the two sexes simply have different physical virtues. Men will dominate when it comes to upper-body strength, which is generally vital in combat roles. And Carter has vowed not to alter the high standards for those roles.

But Kelly doubts that will last: “Whether it’s 12 months from now, four years from now ”¦ the question will be asked whether we’ve [truly] let women into these other roles.” Ideologues who don’t see the results they want will ask, “Why aren’t [women] staying in those roles? Why aren’t they advancing as infantry people?”

I think that past experience indicates this is a very valid worry.

Most people would have no objection to women in combat, if there were some assurance that standards would never be lowered (although some people would still have objections, based on such things as special problems for women captured by the enemy, and/or sexual fraternization between men and women—and resultant pregnancies—at the front). But even those who accept women in combat if it can be done without lowering standards should have observed that those promises have not been met in other fields—such as firefighting, as the editorial points out.

Why would the Marines be any different, and standards remain the same? I don’t see that they would. The way the argument usually goes is like this: men and women are equally capable in almost everything, and there is an inherent positive in allowing women to do everything men can do. If standards exist that exclude women (or nearly all women), there must be something sexist and even arbitrary about the standards. So they need to be relaxed and changed to accommodate women, in the name of fairness and diversity, and the losses will be minimal compared to the gains.

Comments

Will the Marines lower standards to accommodate women? — 37 Comments

  1. Blogger Bookworm has posted several times about the physical differences between in women (muscle, joints, etc.), and why pretending these physical differences don’t exist or can be ignored w/lower standards will be so bad for the military.

    Beyond physical differences, there are social differences. A good example of this is how the integration of women into submarines has gone (not well). First, there’s been some harassment, which is not surprising given that this is close quarters, with minimal personal space. Second, they’ve had trouble keeping women (including women who were quickly promoted to officer levels) since a sub assignment requires extended time away, a lot of it radio silence. Feminists can pretend there it’s no different for women, but just found out over Christmas that a childhood friend’s daughter was given command of a sub, and she gave it up fairly quickly because it just didn’t work with her family life.

  3. Of course the Marines will be forced to lower standards for women — notice that three women passed Army Ranger Course, while NO women passed Marine Officer Basic Course. The Army of course, has already been “equalized” while the Marines have, until now, been able to avoid it.

  4. Count me in the contra camp then. I am opposed to sending women into battle, to kill, be killed and raped. And it will cost lives as men will instinctively protect them, sometimes at the cost of the mission.

  5. Years ago I saw a study on the strength overlap between male and female recruits. The strongest 20% of the women were only as strong as the weakest 20% of the men. These men are normally washed out in basic training. If women were held to the same physical standards as men there would be very few women in the military. That’s why the women have lower physical standards.

  6. In pretty short order it will be observed that there are not “enough” women passing the standards. Look at affirmative action in elite schools, law schools, and medical schools. If there aren’t enough minorities, you just lower standards. Why would the military be different with liberals in charge?

  8. They and everything else women have joined in mass has done this… colleges are ramping up nazi type rhotoric against what they call white supremecists bcause the other groups dont perform as well, and this lack of equal performance is proof of sexism and racism… april is white histiry month, but as the portland system says, its not about celebrstion..
    funny where i work a huge number of top exdcs are dark skinned ppl from india…why are they immune to the suprenecy…

    this is in the military too. but rather than wait till the wretches get there abd the dufferences are stark.. they been moving things ovrr time..
    have to go..funeral…

  9. bsasically they are ramping it up like nazi germany, but niw the socialist nazis have a new label to be proud of, and thejr victims are mislabeled with the moniker…
    similar in military where women n minorities get promktions but dont have to pass the same tests…been harming morale since the eughties and yiu csn readabout it
    from education, business, state, and mire, these unconstitutional race and gender things have managed to cause a decline in the US from 1968 onwards
    i winder as they load the ovens will they realize what they did over the screams…
    its nit just marines..its army, and society etc

  10. The Marines should draft Ashton Carter and put him at the pointy end of the spear. Even Yale and Oxford graduates should have the chance to serve and the standards can be adjusted for their age and physical condition.

  11. I don’t really expect to enjoy any sort of actual schadenfreude once in the grave or dispersed as ashes forevermore. This civilization is doomed, and many of us sort of know it, or fully see this doom as it approacheth, but the necessary civil war to unify us shall not be fought until it is too late (or not at all).

  12. The move is Gramscian, to weaken our military while preaching fairness.
    When I see or hear or read the word, “fair”, I leave or join the opposition.

  13. There are the physical strength differences. Those differences are enough reason to bar women from the infantry.

    Then there is the sexual attraction issue. Soldiers in combat are normally between 18 and 40 in age. A period when testosterone and pheromones are doing the job of promoting the sexual activity necessary to continue the human race. You put the opposite sexes in close quarters for extended lengths of time and it can be very bad for discipline, morale, and efficiency.

    During my years in the Navy I observed how administrative offices were more efficient and had better morale when they were either all waves (females) or all sailors (males). When there was a mix of waves and sailors, there was too much sexual tension for good efficiency, order, and discipline. And those administrative personnel were not out in the boonies with death and destruction hovering over them, as a combat unit is.

    The Navy’s experience with women on ships (women were not allowed on ships during my active duty days) has been abominable, but the feminazis will not allow any changes. The same would be true for women in infantry units, once they are authorized. It may take the loss or near loss of a war to get our heads straight on this. It is to weep.

  14. A CIvilization that send its daughers to fight for it is sick in its soul and sick in its mind/ The Idea that women should fulfill themesleves and their society by becoming parodies of men is the sign of a society it terminal decay.

    Women are not warriors. And it is absurd to think otherwise.

    Feminism is just another Communist political front, and the whole point of any of these fronts ois to destroy Western civilization THe people pushing this have no interest at all in women. They just seek to weaken the Armed Services. The Flag Officers who cave to this nonsense should be Court Marshalled, and put in jail,

  15. Valid comments all around. My objections, as is the case with others, goes beyond the physical differences, and encompass both social and philosophical differences.

    It is interesting. My youngest grand daughter just went off to college; she was appalled that in her dorms they not only had to go down the hall to the showers, but did not have individual shower stalls. I have heard this before. Women expect a level of privacy that is simply foreign to most young men. Women came aboard ship after I retired. I know that accommodations were made, but do not know to what extent. I do doubt that women at sea live in the same conditions as men at sea. These types of considerations are over and above the obvious tensions of mixing the sexes for extended periods in close quarters.

    Philosophically, I do not think it is healthy for society to have a significant percentage of women become warriors. Traditionally, women have brought served as the gentling influence on society. I know that has already changed to an extent, and I expect that this is a factor in the coarsening of our society. To have women completely abandon that role would leave a dangerous void in my opinion.

    I was involved in training women for Naval Aviation, and have flown with a number of women in civil aviation. They certainly are capable of holding their own, although there were definitely different standards in the Navy in the early days. If we can believe what we are told, women have proven themselves equal in aviation combat. We have yet to have a woman shot down and captured; so, it remains to be seen how the country will react to that. Still, we know that there is a vast difference between fighting in the air, and the brutal world of ground combat.

  16. General Robert H. Barrow, 27th Commandant of the Marine Corps testimony before the SASC on Women in Combat. June 1991. (See link below.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy–whDNNKk

    “Most people would have no objection to women in combat, if there were some assurance that standards would never be lowered.”

    Let’s move away from the standards and focus on day-to-day activities. I woman’s body isn’t meant for it. A nine month deployment in infantry takes a toll on the body. Let’s see how much weight, on any given day, an infantry soldier may carry once in war zone –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w846UcmIo5o

    I simply don’t care if a handful of women can pass any infantry training — the minority shouldn’t dictate such things, especially if it’s life & death situations. Put them in support positions. Forget “equality”; this is much more than that. I am absolutely fine with discriminating against women here, without any guilt or remorse.

  17. @ chuck: Ashton Carter is exactly the type of government personnel late General Robert H. Barrow was talking about (8:10 mark).

  18. Standards don’t have to be formally lowered. Just asking a commander why his unit has so few women makes the point. Figure something out, colonel.

  19. Sigh. Here we go again …

    I did 20 years in the Air Force, in an essentially administrative specialty. Broadcaster tech — if there was a military specialty more in-the-rear-with-the-gear, I would like to have known about it. It was a job which females could do just as well as men, without any strain, particularly. Most Air Force jobs, enlisted and officer both fall into that class. Although a war full-on, does rather pose particular dangers – especially one in which combat may come to you, special delivery.

    My daughter now — served for eight years as a Marine enlisted field wireman- including a stint in Kuwait and Iraq in 2002-2003. I have to say right out, that her training as a Marine fitted her better for a turn in the modern combat zone than mine in the Air Force ever did. I never even had to train with a weapon until I had been in for some years. That’s how in-the-rear-with-the-gear that my AFSC was.

    My daughter also did her job in the Marines with no particular hardship, save for some brief brushes in the mid-east with … let’s just say some particularly middle-east mind-sets. But in one of her refresher infantry training courses, she collided at a full run and outfitted with full battle-rattle with another Marine, one of these six-foot tall, 300-lb guys. She sustained an injury to her back which will never be healed, and for which she has a small VA pension.

    But take it from both of us – women can do many of the technical jobs involved in the modern military, do them well, and with credit to service and gender — and the Marines train their female troops to cope very well with combat when it comes up on them unexpectedly and outside of their MOS … but direct combat, humping the pack, in the field, full-on ground infantry … no.

    That’s a brutally physical thing, which breaks women a hell of a lot sooner than it breaks men. Any attempt to make it otherwise is a fools errand.

  20. Women in combat is a disaster so bad that every crazy society to attempt it has gone into the trash bin of history.

    It’s right up there with men giving birth.

    The only nation to have a practical approach is Israel.

    Naturally, this administration can’t take ANY cultural lessons from Israel.

  21. Sgt mom.. you know as I do that this argument is not about all or nothing..wwii saw women at blotchy pk, packing chutes, building, and more..much more…
    It’s about feminists pretending to slay patriarchal protection and attacking sanity in a bizarre way so if there is serious combat the country loses..and loses even if it wins…

    Attacking white males is also about this..they dominate serving, and why should they serve a state that hates them and women who say let’s exterminate them. The law that required illegals to be drafted was recently changed…so the point of it is just another branch of democide..a version of genocide

    What is the birthrate cost of the loss of women?
    For every woman that does not have kids, another HAS to have 5!!!!

    Whether she gets killed or not, works a job, or is lesbian, or gets std that makes her infertile, takes birth control that changes her mate choices as well, behaves in a manner unappealing, puts off too long, has abortion or too many that prevent atachment, or can’t afford them due to finance/taxes..(and other manipulated points)… doesn’t matter

    Another must make up the difference or the target race or group is exterminated…

    Feminism is Raid for humans

  23. They were ordered to do so, so they will lower them. Even though people claim it’s not being lowered. That’s not how orders from the Left works. It “looks” normal, but after awhile, people begin realizing just how messed up that “normal” has become.

  24. I don’t know if the young men WILL retain their “instinct to protect” women and children.

    I see this push as not only an effort to literally emasculate our fighting forces, but to emasculate American men, period.

    Think about it: first the Reds and Pinkos indoctrinated everyone into seeing male and female sexuality as “the same” (a destructive lie, for both sexes), which stripped young women and girls in particular of one layer of protective chivalry.

    Now the Reds and Pinkos want to tear asunder the primal male-female bond still further: teaching the young men that they don’t NEED to protect the young ladies (Subtext? LET THE UBER-STATE DO IT, BOYS!)

    We’ve noticed how the Left’s war on femininity has coarsened the relations between the sexes, almost fatally. But don’t ignore their war on American masculinity.

    After all, as those sociologists whose book I was editing nastily remarked, “Hypermasculinity is the root cause of rampant individualism.”

    Savor that declaration for a while. Roll it around in your mouth. And realize that THIS insight is the root cause of their endless attacks on OUR MEN. Do they know what they do? Why, of course! It’s right there, in that sentence, innit? And note, also, that they have NO problem with machismo, which they never mention; NO problem with moslem misogyny, Ditto! so it’s only Western, and especially American, men they want to castrate.

    I’ve always thought of myself as a women’s libber, but there are deeper issues involved here. Love and death, love and death, and freedom.

  26. Beverly, it’s not western men, it’s western Caucasian men…of which most of the hate and be comes from those that in other times would be potential mates…
    The women were so ooo stupid they listened to outsiders tell them what to think, that their lives were happy gulags, that working for your family in un-taxable ways was alow wing a man to use you, and that working for a stranger at a business in taxable ways was less exploitation by state and business was better… given ang salaries this amounts to a woman with kids working to pay someone to watch them

    But that sucked…so they doubled down on stupid, and voted in high tax, welfare favoring politicians, who would force higher pay through affirmative action. So the state makes more, the business gets the fruits, and she is paying more for illegal immigrants kids while not being able to earn enough for her own…

    This hastens the extermination of her billion year line of life, and brought in people who now attack her. The men are imasculated, and can’t earn enough for her to be interestEdmonton so now they lament about the wedding strike… But if you get rid of the males of your race, dummies could not realize they gone you gone

    There is just so much stupid a society can take

    One acceptable way to look at it is that nature is pruning stupids.

    Right now they want equal pay for equal work.. which they think they will get more, but is really just inviting the camel into the tent to set salaries…

    There is so much more that one could add and show idiocy on stilts and even what’s coming. ..

    When the fit hits the shan who will they turn to
    The new female ghost busters???
    The government that exterminated them and is siding with the future majority
    Business??
    The husband they don’t have

    Have to go flight boarding

  27. I think it’s an absolute certainty that standards will be lowered. I’ve seen it over and over in my life.

    I also remember the Jessica Lynch debacle in which she was captured, without firing her weapon, and then a special forces raid was launched to save her. Something I don’t think would have happened for an individual male soldier. (I’m pretty sure there were instances where males were captured, but SF raids were not mounted to save them.) She was subsequently awarded a Bronze Star. All this for being captured in combat.

  28. Another thing that I know for a fact happened is that women who were nearing deployment all of a sudden turned up pregnant.

  29. No, for all the reasons noted above and one additional. As men will be men, women among combat units in the field will develop relationships with their fellow combatants. Among those men some will be higher in rank. Do we really think that dangerous tasks will be given to those women in intimate relationships with their leaders? How will this affect unit cohesion? How might it compromise the mission?

  30. Tom
    When the Gulf War started one ship had nearly 90% of the women pregnant by shipmates…harmed cohesion terribly…most aborted, but already had honorable discharges

  31. The Marines attempted to stop this with a study that compared all male infantry units with mixed sex units. The difference was significant. Units with women were slower and less accurate and sustained more injuries.

    The study and it’s results were simply ignored.

  33. @ Dons: You can tell the MSM and those behind the push for “equality” want a certain narrative when they ignore such studies, that or they get some social scientist with a bitter tongue to rip into it and announce the methodology immensely flawed and therefore meaningless.

  35. Yes, the Marines will lower standards. The rank and file do what they are told. The officers making these decisions are not combat leaders. They are politicians in fancy suits giving each other medals for being so awesome.

    It is worth mentioning that women have always had a much lower standard for physical fitness in the Marines than men. Find the chart for run time standards on the Marine PTSD test.

    The feminist left has maintained there is no difference between men and women. “Anything you can do, we can do better!” No, you can’t. Now you get a chance to prove it.

    If we keep going down this road, soon our frontline combatants will be girls, homosexuals, transgenders and illegal aliens. That will show those dastardly ISIS!

    Combat Marines and Soldiers don’t give a damn who is next to them, so long as they meet the stardard. Like most problems from the left, this is a solution looking for a problem. I was an infantryman for two tours in Iraq. My combat load was 200 pounds. In the Iraqi July heat. For hours.

    If a chick can hump that ruck, welcome to the brotherhood, sister. Otherwise, don’t waste my time with sniveling ifiocy, feminists.

  37. Another issue that nobody considers is the one of hygiene. It is not unusual for a combat troop to be living in his boots for daysale or even weeks. Combined with wading through sewage to get half decomposed corpses…

    Put it this way: imagine you step out of a truck, and put your boot into what you think will be a shallow puddle. It turns out that it’s a three foot deep cesspool with a rotting dog carcass mixed with sewage and Allah knows what else. That is the reality of the third world, especially in a combat zone.

    A dude can shrug it off until a change of clothes and baby wipe bath during an administrative pause is in order. Could be a few hours or a whole day. Male plumbing is not affected by a sewage marinating session. Soaking a vagina in sewage for hours is not recommended. Nor is injecting 10 CCs of said pond water into a vagina from being tricked by a puddle.

    None of that matters to the crazed feminists out there. They will continue to DEMAND the law of nature is repealed to appease their delicate sensibilities. After all, the military is just another job, rightĺ

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