I’m shocked, SHOCKED by the results
Over the past nine months, the Marine Corps tested a gender-integrated task force in both Twentynine Palms, Calif. and Camp Lejeune, N.C. in an attempt to gauge what the Corps might look like with women in combat roles.
According to a recent report in the Marine Corps Times, only a small number of women were left by the experiment’s conclusion — two of the roughly two dozen who started — mostly in part because of the physical and mental stress that comes with combat roles. Both the men and women in the task force also reported a breakdown in unit cohesion with some voicing a perceived unequal treatment from their peers.
The experiment comes as all branches of the military face a Jan. 1 deadline to open all combat positions to women — from basic infantry battalions to elite special operations units such as U.S. Navy SEALs. […]
The Marine Corps Times report cites a number of instances where women had a difficult time completing physical tasks, like moving 200 pound dummies off the battlefield or from the turret of a “damaged” vehicle. Peer assessments were also mixed.
Lance Cpl. Chris Augello, a reservist who prior to the experiment was pro-integration, submitted a 13-page essay—which he shared with the Marine Corps Times—on why he had changed his mind. “The female variable in this social experiment has wrought a fundamental change in the way male [non-commissioned officers] think, act and lead,” he wrote, referring to the female presence and its effect on how Marine Corps small-unit leaders do their job.
Augello, according to the report, also noted that relationships between the female and male Marines in his platoon sometimes turned romantic and in turn became a distraction. Integration, Augello wrote, is “a change that is sadly for the worse, not the better.”
The military’s primary purpose is to kill people and break things. Everything must be geared towards having the most efficient and cohesive units to fulfill that purpose.
Once the military becomes the social experiment plaything of the Left where its fanatically held beliefs in Gender Theory, Social Justice and Privilege hold sway, the institution becomes both less effective in its purpose and less an attractive place to be for possible recruits.
Feature? Bug?
This is not to say that women don’t have a vital role to play in the military, even in combat roles. There are many skills outside of brute strength that women excel at; e.g. women can be excellent snipers or pilots.
Though the experiment is the first of its kind, women have been serving in roles that have brought them close to or into combat over the past 15 years during two wars. The Marine Corps used Female Engagement Teams or FETs extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq to interact with the women in both countries.
The problem lies, not in qualifications, but in jiggering the qualifications and allowing women to “qualify” under a different, inferior standard.
Another issue was training. Female marines received different training from their male infantry counterparts, and so there was a gap in their preparedness, according to the Marine Corps Times report.
The military must have one standard only. You meet it or you don’t. One training, you pass it or you don’t.
Same standards, same training. Some men and most women will not make it. That’s reality. The sexes are different. And any “neutral” standard that results in sexual parity in, say, infantry combat roles will be suspect and an indication that the American military is no longer the best fighting force in the world.
And therein lies the lies about “equality”. Just like the workforce. If you have women holding half the jobs (equality!),
Lee
SJWs *feel* that any difference between the sexes in any particular job is due to some nefarious Patriarchal Oppression. Indeed, if women tend to choose careers that allow them more flexibility to balance their career and family (say, being a dermatologist rather than a neuro-surgeon) then it is still TheMan keeping womyns down.
They truly hate the idea women choosing to be heterosexual, married and mothers.
Oops, premature posting…
If you have half of the workforce woman, and women can’t do the heavy manual labor required for rougher jobs, then there evolves a situation where women hold a disproportionate number of available professional jobs because it is only men digging ditches, pouring cement, and raking hot asphalt. What you end up with is maybe 5% of women doing manual labour, and 50% of men. Not too equal if you ask me.
When I was a young dude I worked in an open pit mine operating earthmovers. There was a woman on the crew, and I have no problem saying she was an excellent operator, as good as any on the job. Thing was, it was long standing practice that if your scraper broke down, while it was being repaired you were reassigned to a labor job like shovelling around the big rock drills, or dragging around fire hose through mud for the pumper.
At least that’s what I did when both mine and the woman’s machines where broke down at the same time. She mostly sat in the break area reading magazines, or rode around with the foreman all day. And since then I’ve seen that kinda thing a hundred times in a hundred ways, big and small.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Left believes it can defend it’s Power And Control [it’s people are, as always, expendable] with bombs and computers, so troops on the ground don’t matter. So the Left has no compunction in destroying the latter.
I would bet that, if you were able to get an honest answer out of a Leftist, he/she/it would admit that they would like to see the Star Trek [original series] episode ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ come true.
The episode’s plot:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
[…] Please do take the time to click here and read Darleen’s post. […]
Greetings:
One of my managerial conceits has to do with what I refer to as “distraction reduction”. Even in this age of the celebration of multitasking, I have a fundamental Catholic-school inspired belief that concentration and focus are major contributors to success.
So, for me, the introduction of women into the combat arms provides distractions on other than on the aforementioned “romantic” level not that that certainly wouldn’t damage the unit’s cohesion. I still have not been disabused of the idea that most men have some kind of a protective attitude toward womenfolk and the control of this impulse in small unit tactics can be difficult especially when the small unit is two or less.
As to NCO and other leadership aspects involved, I would offer this. Back in my halcyon military days “NCO” was often interpreted as “No Chance Outside” (myself excepted). That basically referred to the quest for a long term career with a long term consequence of an economic type. Today’s “all volunteer” military pretty much ups the ante on that bet and as we can all intuit, any rubbing up against any EEO grievance, real or imaginary, can produce a career fatality. To contend that this will not effect leadership is pretty much idiotic.
This being the Obama administration, it’s hard to bet against another ideological cramdown. Lies will be told, critics will be silenced by hook or by crook, and books will be cooked. But please don’t expect any of those rifleladies to be named Maila or Sasha or Chelsea. That ain’t never going to happen.
If the females didn’t go through the same training as the males, I’m missing the part where this a valid test/evaluation? They should be testing all the way through the pipeline! Otherwise it’s not apples to apples comparison.
I’ve been on plenty of distance road-marches where the “straggler” vehicle dedicated to picking up the “hump drops” is pretty much full of mostly females by the end of the hike. I’ve served with some damn fine female Marines, but proportionally, they simply are up to the rigors of many of the combat arms jobs. Hell, there’s males that aren’t…and so they end up driving trucks or managing ammo.
“aren’t” up to the rigors…
It’s disgusting, all this Social Experimentation, this Social ‘Justice’.
But…hey…that’s a feature of Ideologues, not a bug.