Women and "appropriate" combat standards

Here’s how you create a single gender-neutral standard: You universally apply the existing one that was developed based on a sole criterion — combat readiness. What was wrong with the standard that men had to meet? Nothing, other than the fact that an insufficient number of women can pass it. …

Equally irrelevant are the stories of individual acts of heroism by women pilots, photographers, or MPs. Without question, women can act with bravery, foresight, and tactical intelligence. The issue is their effect on maximal combat capacity when introduced wholesale into combat units. The overwhelming reason advanced for the lifting of the combat ban is to improve women’s chances of promotion within the Pentagon, by giving them the opportunity to show combat duty on their resume. That is a feminist rationale. No one has advanced the argument that all-male fighting forces have been handicapped in their war-making abilities over the millennia because they did not include women in their ranks.

Apart from the obvious problems of sexual attraction and rivalries while on a fast-moving mission, it is absurd to think that putting women into a group of men doesn’t radically change the dynamics of that group We obsessively celebrate “the sisterhood.” Strong women together create a special vibe and special power, we are told; thus the ongoing existence of all-female schools and clubs at a time when any remaining all-male organizations are in the crosshairs. The concept of male bonding, however, once glorified in epics and drama, is now viewed as simply exclusionary, of no value to society whatsoever.