There has been a lot of back and forth about men and women being tested equally for front line combat roles.
First, let me make it very clear, I am one hundred percent for equality between men and women. I’ve worked under women bosses, had no issue with it. While at Morgan Stanley I had a woman business partner for a year and a half. It was a very sucessful relationship, we’re still friends.
I’ve learned a lot from the women in my life, begining with my mother; the vast majority of which has added significant value to my life. And although I can’t say much nice about my two ex-wives: I learned hard lessons from each of them as well.
Finally, I’ve no issue with men and women serving in combat roles together on the front lines. To put it at its most crude: a woman can stop a bullet just as well as I can. But, and it is a big one, in any physical role in which men and women serve together as physical equals, they must be physical equals. Full stop.
So, this new army fitness test rolling out this summer is a very good outcome.
Disagree? Please explain then.
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Ian Welsh
Women are better at cold weather survival, staying still, and avoiding unnecessary aggression. And the question is always “what physical capabilities are actually needed.”
An ex-special forces friend of mine argued that women would be better for a lot of peacekeeping and forward observer roles. And I’m sure you’re aware of the performance of women as both pilots (the night witches) and snipers in the Soviet military during WWII. In what roles is upper body strength and sprint speed (the two things men excel women at most) needed?
Are there roles where womens superior balance, ability to remain calm, long term endurance (cold and hunger) and flexibility means they should be predominantly female? What is actually required in the roles and test measures it? Outside of a few genetic freaks (I met one women who could do 20 pullups easily, she was a scottish lass. Her workout routine would have broken most serious body builders) women just are never going to be able to do as many pullups and pushups. Are those muscles actually needed in the role?
(There is also an argument for sex segregated units to avoid fraternization causing discipline issues. Although that, of course, leads to a lot homosexual liasons.)
Jan Wiklund
As far as I know, “discrimination” means paying attention to things that have nothing to do with what you are supposed to do – in a job, for example.
Before reading this blog post, I read an article about John Hammond, the man who is credited with finish race discrimination in the music industry. He wouldn’t accept racial discrimination, what mattered to him was if the musicians were good as musicians or not.
That’s what discrimination is about.
Curt Kastens
I do not want either men or women in the US or the German military. The militaries of both countries have been a complete failure at protecting their respective constituitons. Both institutions have become nothing more than genitalcider criminal organizations, whose membership has less integrity than the members of Mexican or American drug gangs.
Western Societies would be better off to subcontract out the defence of everything that they hold of value to the Russian Military. Real Americans and Real Germans can
trust the Russian MIlilary far far more than their own militaries. The Russians can do the job until western societies rebuild their own militaries from the ground up. Or the Russians can do the job until climate change and or resource deplition lead to the extinction of nation states prior to the extinction of humanity.
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I totally agree. Modern warfare is all about drones and missiles and AI and women are every bit as capable as creating them and deploying them as men.
Seriously though, this issue of men versus women in the military will in short order, say ten years, be a moot point. AI will be the new warfare. No men or women need apply.
Eric Anderson
I was a State & USFS wildland firefighter for years. Worked side by side many women.
We all took the same pack test. We all swung the same pulaskis and ran the same chain saws.
Any controversy is manufactured by men with tiny ‘egos.’
Al
Of course that’s how it should be. I thought it already was.
Al
On the other hand, no one should be in combat. Imagine if they held a war and no one came.
Joan
I agree with Ian’s comment: there are ways in which women are even better suited, and that should be valued as well. In situations when it really is about upper body strength, then the GI Jane movie holds: she carried her officer out of harm’s way.
I’m definitely in favor of separate sleeping quarters for men and women because a friend of a friend was in the Army until recently and reports there’s pretty much daily sexual assault that only gets found out if the woman ends up pregnant.
Bill H.
@Ian
Your claim that women are superior at “avoiding unnecessary aggression” and at the “ability to remain calm” suggests that you have never met my wife. She is a lovely woman and the light of my life, but I would advise tradespeople not to mess with her.
ibaien
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/30/sexual-violence-tigray-women-abuse-gang-rape-ethiopia-eritrea
as far as i’m concerned, this is the only argument necessary in favor of leaving warfare to women. men can’t be trusted with violence.
Revelo
Most of a modern land army is rear echelons, and the primary physical fitness needed is the ability to work long hours at moderately strenuous work. Women are equal to men at these jobs, other than maybe lifting heavy objects. But small men are also inferior to large men at lifting heavy objects. So create special teams to lift the heavy objects. Furniture movers is an easy specialty to fill with typical low IQ tier recruits. Electronics operation and repair specialists, not so easy. Storm troopers with the ability to run while wearing heavy armor and carrying rifles and ammo and other gear are of limited importance in modern warfare. Think of the army as Walmart: a few jobs like security guards specialized in restraining people, or workers who lift heavy boxes need to be men, everyone else can be either sex.
In any case, USA Army, other than special forces, is mostly a make work and job training program. USA is not going to be fighting any major land wars. Special forces plus Marines will be used for lightning strikes on Cuba, Haiti, Canada, Greenland.
Soredemos
I’ve noticed there’s a glaring bit of cognitive dissonance (or outright cynical talking out of both sides of the mouth) among the type of wokester that insists effectively that sex is a spectrum. If the human race are not really sexually bifurcated, if these aren’t two fundamental categories, then why the ‘progreasive’ insistence on different fitness standards?
If we live in a world where someone can ‘change their sex’ and we’re expected to believe it doesn’t ever result in unfair sports advantage, then we should also be okay with universal military fitness tests.
Funny how that never seems to be the case. Almost as if there are intrinsic physical differences of muscle and lung capacity and so on, which would result in the vast majority of human females not being able to compete on equal footing with men and getting excluded by default.
I’ll note that, so far as I know, there are no actual dedicated men’s sports. There are open sports that technically anyone can compete in, but that women are never competitive in. Women’s exclusive sports leagues were created so women could actually do sports without just getting curbstomped by men endlessly. Like that drunk guy who was ranked well into the hundreds handily beating the William’s sisters. Sorry, but that’s a thing that actually happened.
Purple Library Guy
Bottom line:
I’m fine with equal tests. As long as the tests are relevant to what people will need to do in the job. If the tests themselves are just about sausage-swinging fantasies of what he-man warriors would do, then they’re not very useful either for screening for the right women OR for screening for the right men.
That said, in our current societies I don’t think any sane person should be aspiring to a combat role in the armed forces. It’s pretty much a guarantee that your job will be either to do nothing or to do evil.
Miko
The Red Army’s female snipers are shaking thier heads at you disapprovingly as they sit on a mountain of nazi skulls.
Jorge
Given the poor quality of today’s male Army recruits, I wouldn’t expect this fitness test to be heavily enforced.
Art
Neither men nor women come in standard sizes. I’ve worked with a 6′-3″ woman as jacked as any non-steroid induced gorilla. I’ve worked with a tiny 5-1 man that was as tough and wiry as anything you could ask for.
Mental and physical toughness and a determination to get a job done counts far more than any physical strength.
The Navy was concerned because the ability to do certain jobs can determine if a ship sinks. So the Navy had an all-female detail , of four if I remember right, faced a damage control problem unsupervised. An electric de-watering pump, estimated weight over 90 pound with hose, had to be set three decks down, made to work, and then moved up three decks and back down three in a second compartment. None of the women could move the pump by herself. They moved the pump by having one/two woman on top belaying/ hoisting a rope and the remainder on the ladders maneuvering the pump.
The official conclusion was that the women self-organized themselves faster than men. They were worked together smoothly even though they had not met before. The problem was successfully completed well within the required time.
In one case two rather small women were tasked with changing wheels on a large truck. Those wheels are bulky and heavy. Using backs two average men can just barely get the wheel back on the studs so the nuts can be set. Seemed impossible for two women. They accomplished the job by having one lay with her butt to the tire with the tire ready to mount. By using her feet inside the rim she was able to easily lift the tire so the other woman could install the nuts.
People come in all sizes. There are small men and large women. Where one can’t do a job they use teamwork, or another muscle group, or leverage. My niece went into the Army. Sargent said that with a battalion of small red-head fireballs he could win any war. They outran, out PTed, out-shot and out-tested everyone. My favorite comment: ‘that girl don’t have a stop button’. “Relentless” was how a colonel put it. Energy, intelligence and attitude makes things happen.
Mark Level
I agree 100% with Curt K., appreciate Eric Anderson’s anecdotal observation, A1’s 2nd comment and PLG’s both share exactly where I am at– Who in their right mind wants to be enrolled to kill and maim people for the benefits of a predatory state? Sickos can only be sick, but even street violence is to me more respectable than being the pawn of the Masters of War. Street muggers gain the fruits of their work directly. Soldiers get blown apart and in the US, the VA lets them suffer and die quietly with inadequate support.
I don’t necessarily believe General “McMaster’s” (telling when corrupt pigs with names like this rise to the top, see also Samantha Powers, Ann-Marie Slaughter, women who kill at desks, no need to visit the battlefield) claim that Trump in first term called soldiers “suckers” and “losers”. Even yahoonews fact-checks the reliability of this claim as unproven: https://www.yahoo.com/news/facts-behind-claim-trump-called-204100717.html
If Trump did say this, though, I mostly agree. (An exception would be self-defense, as is happening in Russia, Gaza and the West Bank now, Lebanon etc. It doesn’t make killing moral per se, but self-defense is a basic right that everyone has, beyond that it is a biological imperative.) And my anecdotal evidence would be from when I was in high school during the last few years of the Vietnam War and saw friends’ older brothers return as junkies, alcoholics, raging wannabe bullies, or basket cases.
I appreciate L&S’s cop-out and passive approval of endless war for profit, exactly what his previous posts would lead one to expect. I guess I can’t (as people here used to do with Tallifer) ask him to put his own ass on the line and sign up for the lost Ukraine proxy war given his unceasing hatred for Russians, he’s happy to farm it out to machines. When machines kill Palestinian women and babies, that’s just a cost of doing business– which btw Google corp has made massive profits from, and when Francisca Albenese, UN Special Rapporteur for Israel and Palestine called out, Sergey Brin (a Russian L&S must like) whined that it showed the UN’s “anti-Semitism.”
Last 3 comments as I join the thread by Miko, Jorge and Art I also thoroughly appreciate. Commentary here is mostly spot on, I guess I should appreciate the occasional fly-in-the-ointment as a reminder of the stupidity endemic among the larger uneducated and uncaring ‘Murican public, and why we get and deserve the murderous and looting Ruling Class we deserve.
As Orwell once stated, “A people that elect corrupt politicians, impostors, thieves, and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” He died in 1950, 75 years later nothing has changed. One could also start the observation by altering one word, “A people that kill for . . .” & it is equally or more germane to this post.
shagggz
Mark Level: “telling when corrupt pigs with names like this rise to the top” – Don’t forget General Westmorland 😉
What next, Whitemorworth?
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Huh? Strawman, much? Did you do this with your students?
I’m anti-war so no, I don’t condone AI warfare but I also know I can’t stop what’s coming because that’s vanity — it ain’t all waiting on me.
I won’t get my ass to the front lines in Ukraine and kill Russian peasants. Considering your threats to beat me up, maybe you should join Putin’s war on Ukraine he calls a special military operation. I mean, you have clearly stated many times now you like to fight so get over there and get your fight on if you like to fight so much or do you prefer to beat up the likes of me or beat up your delusional impression of what you think I am?
No, instead of killing Russians on the front lines in Ukraine as you suggest, I will send them diapers instead. Do you care to join me in forming a GoFundMe for diapers for Russian soldiers? That poor, and I mean poor, Russian peasant woman can’t do it all herself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzmvt1WnmZM
shagggz
L&S: Kill Russian peasants? You think that’s what the Ukrainian army is doing? Russia’s pace of advancement has accelerated, their already high kill:death ratio is even higher as Ukraine is scraping the bottom of the demographic barrel in terms of recruitment. Their press gangs are meeting widespread resistance for this war nobody wants to fight. I don’t understand how you can be plugged in enough to be aware of Ian’s work yet be so hallucinatorily out of touch here. You need some better sources of information than whatever the hell this diaper thing is.
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shagggz, how many Russian “soldiers” have died in Russia’s war on Ukraine thus far? You and Russia refuse to accept the million or more number but no validated number is proposed in lieu of it. Instead, you and Russia tell us it is none of our business and it doesn’t matter because Russia is winning the war and it will all be over any day now just as it was supposed to be over within a couple of weeks of Russia’s tanks rolling across the Russian-Ukrainian border so many years ago.
I accept that the million may not be correct but what’s the REAL number then and yes, it does matter because lives matter, even and especially peasant lives which are worthless in the eyes and dark hearts of both Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian oligarchs, but oligarchs everywhere especially and including the West.
From my perspective, and I’ve researched this considerably, Russia has been the aggressor and has engaged in unjustified preemptive, aggressive war against Ukraine. Russia is in the wrong. Russia’s war on Ukraine is a war crime and Russia daily, like Israel against the Palestinians, commits war crimes one after another like targeting civilians and hospitals.
Whereas I am anti-war, I am not anti self-defense. Ukraine has a right to defend itself against a hostile invader who mercilessly attacks its civilians. Therefore, the Patriot missile systems being given as aid to the Ukranians is moral and justifiable considering the Patriots are being used by Ukraine to defend itself and its innocent civilians against Russia’s war crime attacks.
You claim Putin’s Russia, and I make this distinction because Putin’s Russia is merely an epoch in Russian history versus reflective of Russia for all time, wants peace. Hogwash. Trump offered Putin, not that Ukraine would have accepted such a lopsided arrangement nor should it have, a sweetheart of a deal. He offered, not that it was Trump’s to offer, Putin all of the territory in Ukraine Russia currently occupies including Crimea. Putin scoffed at the notion.
Who knows how this will all turn out but are you prepared for the ending to be vastly divergent from what you currently perceive it will be? I mean, you clearly have a lot of psychical energy invested in it for whatever reason — a reason I would like to truly know but I think the truly part would never be forthcoming.
I’m prepared for a potential Ukraine capitulation but like I have said, that will never be the end of it. Ukraine has a history of resistance as unsavory as that resistance has been at times and once Putin believes he is mostly done in Ukraine, if that time ever comes and unlike most of you I don’t believe that is a guarantee by any stretch, he will push the envelope in other former Soviet satellites and perhaps ultimately invade them as well.
The question remains, how many Russian peasants will have to die before Russia realizes once and for all that you can never go back and the pie in the sky that is Russia’s so-called former glory is merely an unattainable pipe dream?
Hiero
+1 to Eric Anderson, same experience – I’ve cut line alongside women that could hump brush out and pull charged hose around better than some of the dudes working the line. And there were giants out there that one guy simply was not going to be hauling out alone if they went down unless it was down a slide. There seems to be quite a lot of overlap for hard labor – of course that’s based on the women that sign up and pass the same physical tests required for all of us. The overlap might be a lot less when considering the entire population, although that would then include a lot of Nancy-boys such that it balances out. Either way, as long as the test is designed objectively, it makes sense everyone passes it. At least until shortages I suppose – small town athletics have girls playing sports on boys’ teams when there aren’t enough boys to fill out the team even in high school.