Boys, girls and fairness: The court can fix a rule that hurts female athletes

If there is a female football player for example on a high school boys' team who is just good enough to be on the team, or was put there because she wanted to play and the school wanted to be P.C., then consider this: she's on the offensive line, for example. She needs to be able to be heavy enough but agile enough to move in time to block the other team's defense to keep them from sacking the QB or taking down the halfbacks so someone else can get to the QB before he can run or get the ball into the air. But let's say, she isn't able to do that because she is not heavy enough to stop the defensive players or let alone agile enough to get in their way. Why? Not because she's female. Instead it's because she really wanted to play and the school wanted to be P.C.; she just really wasn't qualified for the team, that's all. Maybe a different girl, but not her.

Now who's at greater risk than they would have been because a girl's on the team?

The school's team is in essence thrown under the bus in the name of political correctness and the team's QB is the one with the broken collar bone that could have been avoided.

But authors of articles such as these only see things through the lens of nymphotropism.

I don't support women on men's teams in physically rough sports. It does not matter if they can make the team on a given day. Women's bodies are different than men's. Their bones are not as dense, their ligaments and tendons are not as thick. Tendons connect muscle to bone. Men are designed to have more muscle mass, so in order to support the muscle their bones are thicker and the protrusions where tendons connect are more significant. Since women's bodies are not designed for significant muscle mass, they are more likely to get injured, especially injuries like twisted/broken ankles, dislocated shoulders, knee injuries, get knocked down, etc.

There is also the biological difference in how fat and muscle are made. A woman may be equally physically fit in regards to muscle and fat ratio on a given day, but she will have to work harder to maintain it compared to a man.

Anyone who has seen inside the human body knows the anatomical difference between men and women ares not limited to reproductive organs. And if other players are dependent on the woman's ability, then it puts them more at risk, just as Matt explained

One thing I want to point out, is that these same issues are why I do not support women in certain positions in the military, even if they pass physical requirements on a given day. The women will always be the weakest link, which endangers everyone else. Although there are many military roles that woman can serve productively and efficiently. I would not want my male loved ones to serve in a close combat or a physically demanding and dangerous role in the military with a female in their unit.

"The women will always be the weakest link, which endangers everyone else."

That's my problem: women in combat endanger the lives of others--mostly men. Adding women to combat brings no benefits to the military but does bring a lot of problems.

I recently spent a couple of days doing some heavy lifting with a female colleague. I was amazed at how little she could lift--and she's a good-sized woman in decent physical shape. Lifting things together was an issue because she couldn't hold up her end. I suspect the same thing will happen in combat: women simply can't do the job.

Allowing women to get into combat has nothing to do with increasing military effectiveness but everything to do with increasing opportunities for women at the expense of men's lives.

Any military force any time in history has had its ticket-punchers, and they have all been uniformly despised. In the US Army, to be distinguished or eligible for a lot of promotions in combat operations lines of command, one must have earned the CIB or a similarly distinguishing decoration.

Opening combat roles to women is not now nor has it ever been abt asking (much less requiring, as with the draft) female soldiers to start assuming combat role risks. It's abt making it so female soldiers (particularly officers) can get the CIB after doing a certain amt of time in a combat unit in a combat zone so they qualify for the CIB. Then after that, they become eligible for further promotion.

Am I saying every woman who may want in on a combat infantry unit membership is a ticket-puncher? No. Not even every officer who may want that too necessarily fits that bill (thus far, the number rushing to sign up for combat roles is pretty slim anyway). I am just saying that two things arise as a result of adding women into combat roles: More opps. for ticket-punchers to find a way to get to their next promotion with minimal combat experience (and as w/ anything, the less experience you have w/ it, the less likely you are to do well at it or understand it, and thus be able to manage it), and if physical/training stds. are lowered to increase the nos. of female soldiers in combat roles (as I suspect will happen), then the net result would indeed be that male soldiers' lives are put at even greater risk than they are now.

Personally, I'm fine w/ the idea of women in combat roles-- it's way overdue as is requiring women to register for the draft and face the same punishments as men do for failing to do so. What I'm against however is lowering physical standards for females aspiring to infantry roles as well as a concerted effort to ticket-punch female officers all so an aggressive form of "affirmative action" for them can be pursued. (Ticket-punching needs to be stopped somehow anyway).

Playing gender politics w/ the armed forces may well have been a luxury the US could've afforded in the 1980s and '90s. But today? No. The stakes are too high. But as the recent Benghazi hearings have shown, nothing's safe from becoming a domestic matter to be exploited for electoral or other politics-- not even life and death national defense decisions around actions occurring 1,000s of miles away that place otherwise trusting, courageous, and loyal Americans in harm's way unnecessarily.

I figure as long as we have a draft, both sexes should be required to register. On the other hand, the military should decide what role each sex plays based on its primary goal of military readiness. Politics should have nothing to do with it.

I think men are generally better suited for the combat role--and I think women bring little benefit to combat.

On the other hand, I view male disposability as a big issue. An individual man, acting on his own beliefs, may choose to sacrifice himself. But when the tribe or society decides he must because he is more expendable than a woman, we have a problem. In that regard, women have no more inherent value than a man. If she dies in combat, so be it. But I also don't want to sacrifice men to make a political statement about women. In short, in most cases, women can't do the job--which increases the likelihood of men dying. That's where I run into a problem.

And I admit I've gone around in circles on this issue. In the end, my conclusion has been that all-male combat units are more effective and safer for men than mixed-sex units. Permitting women into combat can be on more example of men sacrificing their own safety for the advancement of women.

"Ticket punching" and the draft are issues that can be addressed separately.

Allowing women in dangerous military positions like infantry at the expense of increasing the likelihood of more deaths is wrong. No politically correct gender equality policy is worth the lives of our soldiers or the efficiency of our military.

"I'm fine w/ the idea of women in combat roles...What I'm against.. is lowering physical standards for females aspiring to infantry roles..." -Matt

I think you are missing the point that the physical standards are biologically lower in women no matter where the measurable standards of any physical tests are set. This is reality.

Even if you keep the military policy at the same high standards of doing X amount of situps, run X miles in X amount of time, lift X amount of weight, etc. If a man and woman score exactly the same on any measurable physical fitness test, she is still physically weaker in many ways because of her biology.

For example, if you take 5 men and 1 woman who score exactly the same on the fitness test and march them up a mountainous terrain with 50 pounds of gear on them, the woman is the most likely to twist an ankle. Even if she has gained muscle mass to endure the physical requirements in a measurable test she still has tendons and ligaments that are weaker than a man's. And unless she has exercised and trained MORE than her male counterparts since the date of the test she will have lost some of her muscle and replaced it with fat as it is harder for women to retain muscle mass (she is even more hindered if she uses hormonal birth control, as it promotes fat production over muscle production). I wont even get into the cognitive and emotional differences of woman...

I assume you believe that woman in infantry would not endanger more lives. Even though I disagree, I will respect your opinion, and move on to you statement about how you don't want measurable physical standards to be lowered. But unless measurable physical standards are lower in order to promote women in the infantry, then you are essentially advocating for woman in infantry even if the ratio is 1 woman to 100 men (or maybe even 1 to 500)...Not worth it to me in terms of expense and foreseeable problems.

It seems contradictory to me that you can see the danger to male football players of having a female on a team even when she has met measurable standards to make the team, but you cannot offer our military men the same concern. I will give you the benefit of the doubt; perhaps I am missing some details of your seemingly contradictory opinions.

Actually, ticket-punching is part and parcel of what's going on here. And the draft is also part of this issue: as long as men may be drafted, women should be draftable too. It is about assuming equal responsibilities if you actually claim that you want equal rights. But I think today's feminists have utterly dispensed with the claims of yore about equal rights. They don't even try to proffer it, they know how utterly empty a statement it is. It's obvious to anyone including them that they are not interested in equal rights-- just a better position in society, which is defined as "a position in society superior to that of men". One way they want this is to be exempt from even the prospect of coerced military service (which is tantamount to slavery) while also, and only if they choose, have the option of seeking out and gaining high positions within the military because some of them just like that idea. So I disagree that things like the draft or ticket-punching can be removed from the matter.

As for physical fitness in the armed forces vs. say, on a football field, the two are, while inherently violent situations, not analogous. In the case of football, players have roughly the same protective gear and are unarmed, except and only if you count their bodies as "weapons". In modern warfare, soldiers do not, except only in scarce instances, use their arms and legs or more generally their bodies as weapons. They use their hands to wield weapons, but these are not weapons such as swords or spears, weapons arguably requiring more physical strength to wield, and which can easily in any event be used by a woman provided her weapons are a bit lighter. Just because historically few women have done so doesn't mean they could not have, and history has its examples of women who would not sit by and "let the guys have all the fun" (thinking Joan of Arc, for example). If women really *wanted* to take on the full responsibilities of going into combat, I am sure they'd've insisted on doing so a long time ago. But they haven't, nor are they rushing to do so, except for a handful who aspire for whatever reason (ticket-punching or not). To be fair, most men don't jump at the chance either because, well, "the fun's gone out of it". Swords and spears? Not anymore. Which brings me back to the question of today's weapons: machine guns, missiles, IEDs, drones, etc., none of which require a whole lot of sheer physical strength to use, but perhaps a whole lot of luck to survive the effects of.

A female soldier is as capable of pointing a gun and shooting it with deadly consequence as a male soldier. Likewise she is as capable of steering a tank as a male tank driver and of firing a shot from the tank's turret. As for her injuring her ankle, for example, going up a a hill carrying a heavy pack-- well, male soldiers do that, too. The differences in human physiology you cite are really not that great. But in fact as this article points out, women have *greater* lower-body muscle mass generally than men, and thus may be better generally at lifting things as long as they can use their legs-- things like heavy packs they are carrying on their backs. Of course then you may say that the average woman has a harder time lifting things because she has less upper-body muscle mass than the average man, but consider that once the heavy pack is on her back-- she doesn't need to lift anything with her hands, right?

But really, we could go 'round and 'round with particularities like this all day. It all comes down to this: If a female soldier can meet the same physical req'ts as a male soldier when measured for infantry roles, then she should be allowed to take the job as any male soldier. In addition, as men are evaluated for fitness for military service when the draft is activated, the exact same thing ought to happen to women, even if fewer women can meet the standard (which I anticipate they may not be able to) and thus fewer assigned to combat roles. As for psychological issues: well, really, modern combat causes plenty of men to suffer bad PTSD symptoms and struggle in many other ways due to the consequences of what they saw, did, or had done to them while in combat zones. And so yes, same things'll happen to women, too. But when you sign up for the armed services, that is what can (and does) happen. Not saying it's good or that I like it-- just saying that that is a risk and there is no reason other than sexist nymphotropism as to why women shouldn't assume the same risk.

But it looks like whether either of us or the kid down the block likes it or not, the armed forces is pushing forward with the move to end "combat exclusion", which is reported in this item I just put up. And so, we all just wait now and see how this great experiment's gonna unfold.