May Be Pulled

[Tommy]

Originally Posted by Joe Wicked

What bothered me while I was in the Navy with the women is the different physical standards. A fire does not burn easier because a woman is fighting it, a bullet does not travel slower because it is heading towards a woman, a full equipment load does not weigh less because it is carried by a woman, so why do they not have the same physical requirements as a man. Don't get me wrong, I am NOT anti-woman in the military. I am anti double standard. The physical requirement should be the same, they are doing the same job.

I'm sympathetic to your point of view, but I'll take the other side of the debate just for balance. ... Do you suppose Army leaders decided how much equipment the ideal soldier has to carry and then went out and recruited people of the right size? No, they saw how much load the average soldier could carry and then sized the equipment load to that capability. When they decided to add women to the mix they had two choices. They could either lower the equiipment load to the new, lower average size soldier, or they could keep the average male requirement the same and introduce a lesser requirement for the, on average smaller, women. Of course we, as a society, could have decided not to let women in the military. But I rather like the idea of women paying the same price for freedom as the men. ... If there had been an all female Army that was allowing men for the first time, all the women would be complaining because the men take up too much room in the vehicles and, because they are bigger, men make easier targets. Change is hard.