Even from the days when I was in (72-86) the Army pushed an obviously false narrative of equality between the sexes.
As time went on, they've pushed harder and harder to achieve the socially
engineered and obviously false equivalency.
There were 3 glaringly false, obvious issues wherein women were/are given special privileges that man were not allowed to have:
1. Standards of appearance.
Women, of course, are allowed to have their hair, for example, as long as they want it, as long as it met certain criteria while in uniform. While I was in, the standard was, generally, off the shoulders.
Hair colors had to be within certain specs. Earrings and so forth were limited to a single piercing per ear and, while in uniform, were again limited to studs, white, gold, silver if memory serves.
EQUALITY demands the standards, WHATEVER they may be, must be the same.
Same hair length. Same Jewelry. Same quarters. Same everything.
2. Pregnancies.
If pregnant, women are nondeployable. That is, what amounts to a voluntarily assumed physical condition, pregnancy, literally keep women from doing the jobs they were trained for and paid to do.
The numbers of women in the Army alone who were/are, nondeployable at any one time matched that of the size of a US Army division back then, or roughly 13,000; 13,000 who were given limited (mostly nonphysical) duties, who did not have to go to the field and certainly did not have to go into hazardous areas while in the midst of their voluntarily assumed condition.
That is not to suggest that men can get pregnant; of course males cannot, no matter how much butchery, chemicals or whining they go through.
No, that is not the issue.
The issue is that women can, and all too frequently did/do, become pregnant to either avoid deployment or to leave deployment early because they became pregnant while deployed.
The Army paid lip service to the issue, but essentially no policy change of any import took place that would effectively punish the women who voluntarily became pregnant.
The issue is the difference between women, who could skate on deployment through sex... while men who voluntarily assumed a physical condition which precluded deployment could be and occasionally were severely punished for doing so.
The MEAN is the same, i.e., voluntarily causing a physical issue to avoid deployment. The MODE is different: when women do it, it's fine. When men do it? Not so much.
The costs for this insanity are absurdly high. The costs of replacing a nondeployable female with someone else, male or female, are in the tens of millions. The costs of paying someone for not only the lost duty time for the up to 9 months of the pregnancy but now the months off for the woman of maternity leave (as well as the father, married or not) the medical costs and the costs for quarters for the mother (Obviously the mom cannot stay in the barracks) are in the hundreds of millions every year.
3. PT Standards
It NEVER made sense to have a double physical fitness standard. Recently, the GIF (Good Idea Fairy) implemented a new PT test which requires expensive and difficult to transport equipment to be used to determine fitness.
Initially, the Secretary of the Army (Then a woman, come to think of it) promised that the PT standards would be based on career group standards.
Simply stated, if you were, for example, a clerk, you would not be required to be as physically fit as an infantryman.
There would, the Army was promised, only be a single standard to meet in each career group, regardless of gender.
Fat chance. A single standard requirement would result... and for the most part, WILL result in thousands of women being disqualified from serving OR, in the alternative, require such a huge cut in the standard that a 5 y.o. could pass the test.
That WAS the plan. It never stood a chance.
Delay followed delay. Women in Congress lost their collective minds over the idea.
My take?
A bullet don't care.
Women who're infantry or infantry qualified MUST meet the EXACT, SAME, challenging standards as the men. Most can't. And most will be forced out as a result of this long-needed change.
Women have been Infantry qualified in the Army for the past 8 years. And to the best of my knowledge, precisely ONE woman has been awarded a Combat Infantry Badge. Which means we wasted tens of millions of dollars to qualify women for infantry duty, and then turned around and failed to deploy these women to a combat zone to serve as combat infantrymen.
The dirty little secret?
It's because the Army KNOWS that women cannot perform the ground combat role.
Standards were, of course, cut to nothingness.
Today, for example, the minimum requirement for passing the PT test is, and I kid you not, 10 pushups. 10. Is it any wonder that a woman SecArmy would approve that insane measure of upper body strength?
The Marine Corps study (2015), rejected in advance by then SecNav Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy and part of the Obama Amen Chorus, proved the limitations of women in a ground combat role:
From the Sergeant Major of the test, SgtMaj Justin LeHew
https://ec.militarytimes.com/static/pdfs/Sgt-Maj-Justin-Lehew-Facebook-post.pdf
"This was as stacked as a unit could get with the best (men AND women) Marines to give it a 100 percent success rate as we possibly could. End result? The best women in The GCEITF as a group in regard to infantry operations were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group in this test study.
They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations. SECNAV has stated that he has made his mind up even before the release of these results and that the USMC test unit will not change his mind on anything."
Because of the INSTITUTIONAL "women are equal in combat" scam, readiness of the US military in all services and in all jobs has suffered and will suffer.
SecDef's change in policy will naturally have the left screaming. But the vast majority of the left have never set foot in uniform and are putting their woke virtue signaling ahead of the reality which is, for ground combat, there is precisely ONE acceptable standard. One.
It's not unusual for grunt units to go out with a basic load of 100 pounds of equipment, weapons, ammo, grenades, water, etc. for each soldier.
(As a brief aside: remember the insane celebration of a female Army Captain who staggered across the finish line of a forced march requirement to go 12 miles in 3 hours or less? Collapsing in exhaustion after getting it done? Unable to perform the duties of her position?
She was carrying 35 pounds. During the video, notice the male soldier coming in ahead of her showing zero signs of exhaustion. And she was lionized for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta6MQNz9e-0 )
I guarantee that few, if any, of the women complaining about this long needed, long overdue policy change will not ever be one of the select few who have done this.
And for the women in Congress, before they complain?
I'm sure the military would be more than happy to provide them with the opportunity.
And it cannot be based on your reproductive abilities, your hygiene standards and your ability to do ten pushups.
As I stated, a bullet don't care. Shrapnel don't care. And a unit's effectiveness and readiness is only as good as its weakest link, which in almost every case?
Are women.
Keeping the status quo guarantees higher casualties. It guarantees reduced effectiveness. It guarantees increased costs and more troops getting screwed because, to put a point on it, a woman couldn't keep her legs closed to deploy with her unit.
And, of course, can you envision what would happen to a woman captured in combat?
This policy change will eliminate most women. But it will go a great deal towards ending the fake equality the US military has been shilling for years.
Thank you, Pete Hegseth. Your policy change will save lives of both genders.
