Robert Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, says the delay shows that women just can't meet the same standards.But 45% of the women did it. Depending on how you look at it, that's a surprisingly high percentage.
"Young women, in spite of all the training and all the best intentions, are not going to be the equal of young men in terms of upper body strength," Maginnis says. "You've got to have a lot of upper body strength to lift the stuff. Been there, done that."
Maginnis just wrote a book called Deadly Consequences: How Cowards are Pushing Women into Combat. He says the issue has more to do with politics than protecting the nation.
December 27, 2013
The Marines Corps quietly puts off the requirement that female Marines perform 3 pullups.
A Marine spokesperson cites the need to "ensure all female Marines are given the best opportunity to succeed." Only 45% of female recruits could meet the standard, which 99% of male recruits meet.
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257 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 257 of 257My daughter is 5' 9" and weigh approx. 150. She's flown on helicopters on blood gathering missions and been on convoys as well as being under fire in the Camp Bastion attack in September 2012.
Inga wrote:
My daughter is 5' 9" and weigh approx. 150. She's flown on helicopters on blood gathering missions and been on convoys as well as being under fire in the Camp Bastion attack in September 2012.
how many pull ups can she do? how fast does she run three miles?
It sounds like she's a medic, not serving in direct combat. Even if she can go on blood drives does that mean she should be on the front lines as an infantryman? Give me a break.
The issue is not women having any involvement in the military at all. The issue is can most woman hack it if they were forced to into combat as an infantryman. And the answer is no. We shouldn't have to have people die just to fulfill some liberal experiment that supposes women and men are interchangeable.
My dear Jr. When Camp Bastion was attacked and when she flew on that helicopter she was under fire, a bullet or worse could have hit her as easily as the man next to her, YOU GIVE ME A BREAK.
You people don't want to be called bigots, but honestly
LISTEN to yourselfs. Disgusting.
If its not gay bashing, it's women bashing on a DAILY basis here on these threads. What is wrong with you folks?
Lets have the worlds best male boxer take on the worlds best female boxer. Who's going to win?
Lets have the top 20 female football players take on any NFL team or even college level team.
Those are not even combat scenarios, but it points out that there are divisions for a reason. Combat does not distinguish between divisions.
So, thinking that combat should operate like sports is fallacious. It's not simply being able to have diversity hires to fulfill some quota. It's having people on the field who can save your life. Who can march for 20+ miles with a machine gun and heavy equipment on their back. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be on the field of battle. Its both dangerous to the person and his comrades if he/she can't hack it.
And the military is treating allowing women in as if it were a division sport.
For example. For men to earn 100 points they have to run a 3 minute mile in 21 minutes. For a woman to earn 100 points she has to run a 3 minute mile in 18 minutes. For a man, that would only give him about 82 pts.
Meaning, even the best female runner is only as fast as a guy who scored in the top 20%. Women until recently didn't even have to do pull ups at all. They only had to do "flexed arm hangs" for a certain period of time. Because women in general do not have the upper body strength of men.
Its notsexism to say that, it's simply acknowledging biology.
Does that mean that no women on the planet could pass the test? I think its fair to say that no woman will score a 100 on the physical test if they had to go by the male requirements.
Inga wrote:
My dear Jr. When Camp Bastion was attacked and when she flew on that helicopter she was under fire, a bullet or worse could have hit her as easily as the man next to her, YOU GIVE ME A BREAK.
and if I were a civilian on that helicopter a bullet could have hit me too. Is being in danger of being hit by a bullet grounds to serve as a combat infantryman?
Lets instead take an instance where a woman is out of bullets and gets into a circumstance where she has to grapple with a 200 pound guy with a knife. Who's going to win that fight statistically.
There's a parallel between the military "quietly" relaxing the requirement that female Marines perform 3 pullups, and the SCOTUS majority in Windsor not declaring homosexuals (or at least those in same sex couples) a protected class status and extending full 14th Amend protections.
Actually, the Marine Corps "relaxed" nothing. It was an experiment. For EVER we've had separate requirements. male Marines did their pull-ups which they are better able to do, and we did something called a "Flexed Arm Hang", which men, to a MAN, found IMPOSSIBLE. It consists of climbing up tp a pull-up bar, clutching it, holding your head and chin ABOVE it (time starts at that moment), and hanging on for dear LIFE until such time as gravioty and your weight pull you to your arms being fully extended. A minimum acceptable length to pass was 20 seconds ~ and ETERNITY for me ~ be we always had some WM's who could stay suspended above the bar, elbows locked in, for MINUTES. Men always scoffed, and we'd say "YOU get up there." One would and immediately PLOP.
By the way, for a man to earn a hundred points on his physical test he has to do 20 pull ups. If a man were to do 3 pull-ups he'd only get 15 pts.
15 pts!
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/marines/l/blfitmale.htm
So lets not pretend like 3 pull-ups is some insurmountable hurdle of fitness that women are competing with the top men over.
Tree hugging sister. I'm not sure if the flexed arm hang is impossible for men.
Here's men's health talking about it as a way to build upper body strength.
http://www.menshealth.com/deltafit/flexed-arm-hang-weekend-challenge
My guess, men find it harder because they are heavier, and have their weight in their upper body, while women have their weight in their hips, and are lighter.
But men can train themselves to do pretty well on the flexed arm hang. Not too many women are going to be able to do twenty pull-ups. Hell, not too many men are.
IIRC the data on physical ability differences between men and women show that those women in the upper 10% of the upper quintile (i.e., Olympic athletes) are only as strong as men in the bottom of the lower quintile of strength and endurance. (And as has already been pointed out by someone above, the women are pretty much maxed out while the men have great potential for further improvement)
I'll leave now by saying that Anglelyne@11:33am pretty much sums it all up in a nutshell--we're just beating a dead horse...we've pretty much "covered the waterfront" on this subject. We're just making the rubble bounce now..
Both pull ups and flexed arm hangs require training to pull off. If you ask most guys about a flexed arm hang, they are going to ask "what's a flexed arm hang?"
Because, they go right to pull ups. So, if men are not as good at it, I think its a foreign excercise, whereas women train with the exercise because they can't do many pull-ups.
Speaking of the the flexed arm hang. For a woman to score 100 pts she has to hold the flexed arm hang for 70 seconds.
In the link I provided from Men's Health, the trainer, Durkin's best time was 97 seconds.
So its perfectly reasonable for a reasonably fit male to score a perfect 100 pts on the flexed arm hang if they were held to the woman's standard (and if they trained to do the flexed arm hang).
I never saw this coming!
Har.
Because women are not as strong as men Inga slurs all commenters as bigots and women haters. Still, though, 45% of women did pass the three pull up test. You go girls.
"there is no evidence that diversity aids them"
Actually, there is _one_ class of example I can think of, but it is a very narrow class, unrelated to diversity for its own sake, and keying mostly on foreign cultural familiarity and linguistics, with a side nod to gender. That example was the French experience with mixed units in Indochina, and ours with Chieu Hois in Vietnam, taking advantage of their ability to speak the local language, and read the local demeanor, plus, with the Chieu Hois, their insights into VC and NVA modes of operation. Note, that all the _American_ diversity in the world is unlikely to help there about as much as having blacks in A Team designated to deploy to Norway for WW III did in the 70s and 80s. Which is to say, not at all. That said, there is a small advantage, for COIN only, in the Arab cultural area, to having women available to talk with local woman, to a) persuade them, and b) pump them for intel. This may not quite balance out the extra casualties you will take from Arabs who WILL NOT surrender to any unit they suspect of containing women.
What do either of you expect to teach Inga? She doesn't seem to have the first clue about war. She doesn't seem to have the first clue about the sociology of a military organization. And she doesn't seem to be able to get past the "straight, white, males are the only problem" approach to integration.
"Those who can't meet the standard should not pass."
What standard, Ann? The last time any part of DoD tried to apply a job related physical stamndard to women was MEPSCAT. It was quickly killed because it tended to show that few woman were fit even to be clerks. Yes, seriously; clerks load heavy filing cabinets on the backs of trucks and most girls couldn't.
Here's an extract from something my publisher has been serializing on the subject of training for war:
Axiom Nine: In the absence of valid conditions, standards are completely meaningless.
A few examples: 1) Task: Engage target with a rifle … Conditions: Given range of one hundred feet, an infinity of ammunition, a zeroed rifle, no wind, on a perfectly clear, sunlit day, with the target painted bright orange. Standards: hit the target at least once. 2) Task: Run twelve miles. Conditions: Given three days, a smooth flat pavement, athletic clothing and shoes. Standard: Arrive. 3) Task: Conduct reconnaissance patrol. Conditions: given an MTO&E infantry squad, a perfectly flat golf course overlooked by a hill, the hill being accessible, in the absence of an opposing force, with various displays laid out on the golf course, in plain sight, without camouflage, said displays showing friendly and enemy equipment, in an inactive NBC environment, with a working radio, in the daytime, without fog or precipitation. Standards. The unit identifies eighty-five percent of the equipment displayed…
You get the idea. Cub scouts could do any of those. Brownies could do any of those. There’s nothing wrong with the standards, per se, but the conditions make those standards meaningless.
Conversely, try this:
Task: Conduct Deliberate Attack
Conditions: Given an MTO&E infantry company, with sixteen hours to prepare, from issuance of the warning order from battalion to crossing the line of departure, with the operations order from battalion coming not more than four hours after the warning order, the LD being at a distance of four kilometers, the objective being two kilometers past that, with the entire area between the LD and the objective subject to direct enemy fire, mines, indirect enemy fire, in an active NBC environment, with an enemy platoon one third the strength of the company, dug in, said platoon blocking access to the objective, with trenches and bunkers, the enemy having tactical, protective, and supplementary wire emplaced, plus a protective minefield. The OPFOR has both MANPADS and light cannon for air defense. The company will be supported by the battalion’s heavy mortar platoon, two sorties of A-10s, and one battery of 105mm towed guns. Ammunition for indirect fire support is not constrained. Terrain is jungle. There may be streams and / or swamps to slow progress. Casualty assessment will be mixed MILES and evaluator judgment.
Standards: The objective is taken. The OPFOR platoon blocking the way suffers not less than seventy-five percent casualties. The company suffers not more than twenty-five percent casualties. No friendly unit endangered by friendly fire or action.
I trust it’s not too hard to see how those standards are actually fairly tough to meet, given those conditions.
Inga you ignorant ****: being a rifleman in the military is not about shooting at the range, it's about shooting in the field.
Kirk: It's not even about that, since infantry takes 89-90% of the casualties, generally, while making up as little as 8-12 % of the Army and Marines, and inflicted 30-40% (usually the lower). In other words, distasteful as the thought may be, and no matter how much some may avoid mentioning it to the rank and file, infantry is more about enduring death, death and maiming all around, death of comrades closer than brothers, than it is about killing.
I'm surprised that the standard is so easy. I could do 15 pullups as a 6th grader, and I was somewhat overweight and one of the last guys picked when students were picking teams in gym class. (I will confess that since messing up my shoulder at age 31, I have not even attempted any chinups.)
Was the standard always so easy, or did they reduce it to allow for higher "success" rates?
Tom said -
"I also know what I'm talking about, and including the very small percentage of woman who can pass the physical requirements will still lead to problems. We haven't even gotten into the health and hygiene issues involved in living in sometimes extreme filth for days or weeks at a time with no opportunity to truly bathe or shower. Never mind the logistics issues of having to defecate and pee somewhere, often out in the open in front of your comrades.
In short, a disaster waiting to happen."
Actually there are women who don't care if they stink, have no problem shitting or pissing in front of anyone if the need arises and would probably swap out a rag in public if required. That is part of the combat mindset.
Of course that mindset, combined with strength and the brutality required to survive when TSHTF are far often more found in testosterone equipped humans.
Some of that stuff can be trained into individuals, some cannot.
I don't advocate special training or standards. All I am saying is objectively determine the need, set the standard, train those who qualify and maintain the standard.
Tom K.,
No disagreement, I was just assuming all that was understood in the phrase "in the field".
I suppose I should have said "in the field of battle".
Capt. Schmoe,
With all due respect: in the abstract, what you say is fine. In the on-the-ground reality, doing all this heaving lifting for the dozen or half-dozen women who would actually qualify annually is just nuts.
(I may have borrowed this assertion, if not the actual wording, from Donald Sensing fwiw.)
Kirk: The one thing you can absolutely count on when discussing this is that those who haven't been there, done that, and deeply thought about it a) have no clue and b) have no clue that they have no clue, and c) have no clue that there even might be a clue that they don't have. Witness the regular comparison between gender and gender orientation integration and ethnic integration.
By the way, Ann, send me an address and I'll send you a book that will tell you _exactly_ how to make female ground combatants.
Kirk Parker, you ignorant ass, my daughter DID shoot her weapon in a war zone in an attack she was in at Camp Leatherneck, when camp Bastion was attacked by the Taliban.
What does that have to do with Bataan, Stalingrad, Verdun, and the Siege of Hue, Inga?
Not a damn thing.
The irony here is that a lot of women will needlessly bury their sons so that we can have the illusion of female equality.
Inga, that did not make her an infantryman.
Kirk Parker, I didn't say it did, fool.
Inga,
Sharpshooter is a second rate shooter in the Marines. Nothing to be ashamed of, but not impressive either.
Marksmanship is only the tiniest part of being a warrior. No one claims that shooting requires great hysical strength.
Please don't take my comments wrong. You should be very proud of your daughter. Being a Marine is a tremendous accomplishment.
Skyler, I am very proud of her and I'm just glad she knew how to fire her weapon and came home safe from Afghanistan.
THS, we served together and you are one of my favorite SNCO's ever, but I call BS on your claim that men can't do a flexed arm hang. I've had women Marines make a similar challenge to me and it was pretty darned easy to hang for far longer than the maximum time. If any man ever had a problem doing the flexed arm hang, it was only a mental failure from not being accustomed to the test, not a failure of strength.
And Skyler she isn't a Marine, she's an FMF Corpsman.
I remember when the Canadian Army was "opened" for females to join the Combat Arms, and fitness tests "normalized" to allow female candidates to pass.
Oddly, machineguns, manpack radios and ammunition does not get smaller and lighter when a female soldier has to carry it...
Inga, you dumbass... The infantry isn't a job or a single event. It's a way of life that our infantrymen sustain for months and years at a time. The fact that your daught fired her weapon at Bagram doesn't qualify her to be an infantryman any more than catching a foul ball in the stands would qualify her to play for the Red Sox.
Inga, you mentioned her (excellent) score on the rifle range in a way that implied she WAS a rifleman/sharpshooter, not that she merely qualified at that shooting level.
As everyone else here is trying to point out, that doesn't make her a qualified combatant.
(You're just engaging in yet another instance of your loathesome chickenhawk-by-proxy argument here, give it up.)
Sharpshooter isn't "excellent." It's sort of like getting a B minus. No infantry soldier or Marine would be content with a sharpshooter badge.
Jason: Shhhhhhhhhh! I'm trying to distract her past that irrelevancy...
Kirk Parker, why do you, a Christian, lie? I did not say her Sharpshooter was "excellent".
Jason, I did not say she was in the infantry or even desired to be in the infantry. I said women in combat did as well as men during the BASTION, not "Bagram" attack. You don't know what happened at BASTION? I now doubt you were ever in the military yourself and are merely a poseur blow hard.
Inga's overall problem is that she equates participation in a "combat event" with assignment as a "combat arms soldier" in a combat theater for a period of time.
21 years, bitch. 13 years of it infantry. Almost all Guard time, one combat deployment to Iraq as an infantryman. Ramadi, to be precise. Click through my profile and google around on my name and I have an Internet footprint a mile long to verify it.
Waiter, one order of crow for the lady, please!
Just to be clear and to echo what someone else pointed out above, male Marines who can only do three pull-ups are subject to ridicule.
If women can do three pull-ups then that is an indicator that the standard is too low.
Inga, the complete failure at Bastion is not something anyone should use as a example of how to conduct warfare. Perhaps if there were fewer women around (and that they had continued patrolling outside the base) then we wouldn't have had our butts handed to us and our planes destroyed.
Yeah, but we should be happy that your daughter was there to witness the humiliation of our nation.
Skylar, I most certainly was not saying what happened at Bastion was any way to conduct warfare. My daughter usually jogged around the perimeter around that time of evening, because it was cooler. As it happened she was exhausted after a 14 hour day and went home to her can instead. Had she and her friend been out there she may very well have been killed.
Tell me why things would have been better with less women around, how would it have affected an attack by the Taliban? People here can try to take away the valor and bravery that the females showed there that day, but it doesn't reflect well on those who served, makes you look like bitter little men.
Inga wrote:
As it happened she was exhausted after a 14 hour day and went home to her can instead. Had she and her friend been out there she may very well have been killed.
If she was exhausted after her 14 hour day, imagine if she was also lugging around her machine gun and equipment while hiking. She would not be able to hack it.
That is not a woman hating comment. Women simply do not have the upper body strenght. Perhaps one woman in 10,000 could do it, but she'd be a freak of nature.
I'm not saying that womnan have no role anywhere in the military. Just not as infantrymen.
"Tell me why things would have been better with less women around, how would it have affected an attack by the Taliban? People here can try to take away the valor and bravery that the females showed there that day, but it doesn't reflect well on those who served, makes you look like bitter little men."
Instead, why don't you tell us how it was better for having women around?
Inga wrote:
Tell me why things would have been better with less women around, how would it have affected an attack by the Taliban? People here can try to take away the valor and bravery that the females showed there that day, but it doesn't reflect well on those who served, makes you look like bitter little men.
It's not a question of bravery. Or the ability to shoot a gun. it's the trait of strength that women lack which makes them unsuitable to be infantry.
Not that either, jr, or not just that. It's far more about discipline and social cohesion, both of which are badly undermined or destroyed by the presence of women, even where they, themselves, as rare individuals, are first rate and do nothing to cause it.
"not 45% of women, but 45% of those who applied to be a marine. "
This is incorrect. It was 45% of female Marine Recruits at the END of a 12 week Basic Training.
So, it isn't 455 of applicants, it is 45% of BCT Graduates.
Ingy, my battalion was responsible for the defense of Bastion, Camp Leatherneck, and Shorabach about a year before the attack. I know that the perimeter road is popular to run on. The reasons for the disastrous attack succeeding against us have a lot to do with the draw down in forces and the attempt to transition to contract security. They stopped patrolling outside the base, I'm told.
There were all sorts of people, journalists, civilians, and the like on that base and many of them went running. I'm sure that an old lady in a wheel chair might have been there as well. I don't think mere presence makes anyone particularly suited to combat.
And to anyone who questions the relevance of Pull-Ups to combat, can anyone see the need for somebody carrying 60-80 lbs of shit to pull themselves over a wall?
The reason the Marines want their 0311's to be able to do a whopping 20 is so when the time comes and they have had not had a 14 hour day but three 20 hour days in a row and are tired, sick and hungry, that they can ABSOLUTELY do at least the one pull-up over that wall that counts.
That is life as an Infantryman.
"It's not a question of bravery. Or the ability to shoot a gun. it's the trait of strength that women lack which makes them unsuitable to be infantry.'
Exactly. It is one thing to sit in a fixed or semi-fixed position, surrounded by supplies and defend yourself. It is entirely something else to close with and destroy the enemy over rough terrain, carrying everything for the assault on your back, arriving exhausted, jumping into a firefight.
Being able to shoot in Combat is like being able to place an Order at the McDonald's drive-thru. first, you have to build a road and a car and then learn how to drive. There are so many things that have to transpire before you even get to where you need to be to even take the shot.
If any woman can meet the standard, then by definition the standard is too low.
No sissies need apply. No one promised you a rose garden.
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