Sigh. I have just read that a young woman named Sage Santangelo has failed the infantry-trainimg course for Marine officers at Quantico, bringing the rate of female failure to 29 out of 29. As an old hand with thirty years covering the military, I can attest that this vu is getting more deja all the time. Women have never succeeded at physical things in the military becauese they can't. More on that in a moment.
Santangelo seems a most impressive woman. Any woman who would attempt the TBE course is necessarily impressive. We are not talking pampered Swarthmore brats in Women' Studies. She reports making her first solo lfight [sic] at fifteen, climbing most of Colorado's highest peaks, playing goalie on a boy's hockey team. She is Marine material, and has my respect.
But she washed out on day one. Even tough, fiercely determined, highly athletic women can't do it. It isn't their fault. We are born with the equipment we are born with.
Read the rest here.
She is Marine material, and has my respect.
ReplyDeleteFred is being polite. I wouldn't even go that far. It is hard to imagine an institution more inherently male than a military. We are deconstructing venerable institutions to accommodate 95th percentile women who still can't train to the level of combat-readiness of 50th percentile men.
BTW, as the military becomes an increasingly gay-female-affirmative action pageant, men do what they've always done: withdraw behind ever-steeper barriers to entry in Special Forces and the merc companies.
She is Marine material, and has my respect.
ReplyDeleteFred is being polite. I wouldn't even go that far. It is hard to imagine an institution more inherently male than a military. We are deconstructing venerable institutions to accommodate 95th percentile women who still can't train to the level of combat-readiness of 50th percentile men.
BTW, as the military becomes an increasingly gay-female-affirmative action pageant, men do what they've always done: withdraw behind ever-steeper barriers to entry in Special Forces and the merc companies.