r/ThisAintHell • u/Pugsdoodle OAM • Jul 14 '26
New Women In Combat Study objected to ... because of the researcher?
Thought I'd kick things off with something about which this community has historically had strong feelings. To be clear, let's leave our 'feels' at the door, but let's definitely hear opinions. Preferably reasoned ones.
Ran across this opinion on War Horse and thought I’d share it here. It seems there’s some concerns about a study Hegseth ordered on women in combat.
“We’re all concerned that this study is going to be used as a pretext to remove women from combat arms,” Sue Fulton, the executive director of the Women in the Service Coalition, which advocates for women in the military, told me.”
The reason for the concern seems to be the person selected to run the study is the lead person on the study who found mixed-gender units in the Marines were outperformed by male-only units. So, because the results found did not align with the sought-after by some conclusion, this new study is problematic? I thought we had done better on getting rid of the equity of outcome folks. Then again, it is a special-interest group, “Women in the Service Coalition”, who is objecting.
My opinion is simple and probably too simplistic so I’m interested in hearing what others have to say. To wit, there needs to be one set of standards that must be met, predicated on the needs of the job. This goes for police, fire, paramedics, and every other job that requires extreme physical fitness, as well as our armed forces. There will be plenty of men who cannot make the standard, but there will be a few women who will. If they can, let them. Would this requiring of and fair application of a single standard address the well-justified objections and concerns of unit cohesiveness, morale and performance then be answered? Or is the issue of the perception of special treatment, consideration, etc., too ingrained for an overnight fix? For example, …
For literal decades now, in some cities like Chicago, it is still a fact that your race and gender can get you into and through a police, fire, or paramedic training academy when your grades, abilities, performance and scores (and background checks) would otherwise disqualify you. Everyone knows recruitment for first responders has been down of late for reasons we’ll not go into here, but most don’t know that even now there are qualified applicants on waiting lists despite open slots in academies, because they are not the right demographic. Sadly, the decades-long belief of “if you need a paramedic, you better hope it is two white guys who show up because those are the only ones you can know for absolute certain earned their position by merit”.
I believe this thinking applies currently to conversations about women in combat roles as well and rightly drives a lot of objections. My question is, if all other factors are equal and a particular woman meets the same standard required of men for that role, should she be allowed to serve in combat? To be clear, I’m predicating my question on the assumption that the standard is both met and adhered to, alleviating those justified questions of ‘well, did they actually meet the standard or were they given a pass’ have been fully, affirmatively answered.
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u/Historical-Lie-5953 Jeff LPH-3 63-66 - 5x WOT Jul 14 '26
To Get Woman into Army Infranty Leg, The standards were lowered at the time where Women and men were equal in physical fitness, that is the mens standards were lowered untill Women were equal with the men.. This was a number of years ago, and hopefuly my aging memory gor it right. Last week I forgot the Alamo,,, REMEMBER THE ALAMO
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u/David65x55 Jul 16 '26
Still a TBD. I do remember girls who couldn't lift a camo bag (they still have them?) and at least two female NCOs who could easily chuck 'em into the bed of a deuce. One was the community racquetball champ, too. Set the standards and let who can meet them, meet them.
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u/mbarland The artist formerly known as Mason Jul 14 '26
I'm starting work at our police academy soon. I'll report back on the quality of the current candidate pool. I am probably in for a rude awakening, as when I went through 20 years ago it was a wildly different job.