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I had time to think about this. And I think the smartest thing would be to subsidize women so they can reach the same or close to same fitness standard as men, rather than reducing their fitness stadard, or pumping up men's fitness standards.

This is one of those things that really depends on how it's implemented. If they just abolish the female scoring column and force everyone to use the male scoring column then there are so many more questions. Will women be judged 1 to 1 against men? or will promotion boards develop an idea of where women should score on the male column? Are they going to get rid of age too and just score everyone as if they were 18 still? Is this going to be a new test for all services?

PT tests have already been undergoing a lot of changes recently. And the one thing that combat arms troops have asked for is simply a score one must meet to be in a combat unit that isn't age or gender scaled. The minimum we would ask of someone in such a unit, such as marching 12 miles in 3 hours with a standard rucksack. This would be separate from the general test which is scaled and meant to make sure we maintain a physically healthy force.

I don't think that's what fuckhead and company have planned though.

All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary

This tells me they want to change the general physical fitness test in combat units, the same test used to promote people, decide who goes to schools, and can lead to being discharged if you continually fail it. This is not what we asked for. For those unaware the military has been working on overhauling physical fitness tests to more closely resemble combat tasks for nearly a decade now. This has been a measured and science based project until now. And the part that tells me it isn't going to be that anymore is when the Secretary of Defense believes he knows what the operational demands of any specific combat unit are. And says this like it hasn't been what the military has been doing.

And before some keyboard warrior comes through here talking about upper body strength to carry wounded people under fire you should know that 20 plus years ago in Infantry Basic Training we were told you don't do that. You make the area safe and then you roll their ass onto a stretcher, you tie them down and literally drag them out. And since then we've gotten much better drag stretchers because that is by far the preferred method to get casualties to a vehicle. We've also had women in frontline units for over a decade now. Even in 2003 while they were officially banned, we brought their units to the frontline because we needed them. Even in a peer to peer combat posture. As a combat infantry veteran I would far far rather have a woman in my patrol that has been trained to work with us because we've recognized it's something we need; than I would have a woman that I need but also have to train under fire because we put our heads in the ground to satisfy some stupid fucking civilian idea of machismo.

There are things besides fitness that are relevant to combat situations. In the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which takes place in a war zone in Afghanistan, we see the female news reporter is able to talk to the female residents in a combat zone and gain information about who was sabotaging a US-built well. The male soldiers weren't allowed to speak to the women of the village, and had no way of getting this info.

Women make up 50% of the world population and sometimes you just need a female soldier to properly work with the locals. If men cannot get information from some populations because of their gender, then it makes sense that rules might be slightly bent to allow women to take part in combat roles. As a soldier, I wouldn't want to be miss relevant info just because no one in my troop could talk to half the local population- that ignorance of knowledge puts my life at risk too.

i'm torn. As a gender abolotionist, I think more things should be gender-neutral.

For combat MOSs, they should all be expected to pass the same physical fitness standard. You either raise the female standard to the same level as males, and have fit females. Or you can lower male standards and have less fit male and female service members in combat. Or you can meet somewhere in the middle and still have less fit male and female service members in combat. Personally, I say raise the female standard for combat MOSs to that of males.

Combat is not about equality. It is about lethality and that is it.

I approve the weakening of the US armed forces. That way when you fuck heads start invading Greenland, Panama, Mexico or Canada at least some of your morale and effectiveness will have been sucked away.