Women Packing Iron

a major award

Last women wash out of Ranger School Biology: 1 Political Correctness: 0 [...] For those who aren’t familiar with the course, it is 61-days of intense stress, sleep deprivation, lack of food and any other item that could conceivably make life at the bottom of Maslow’s Heirarchy not a challenge, and general suck. The graduation rate is a [deleted]-hair above 50% but this masks the fact that 37% of all graduates have to repeat at least one phase. So 61-days is really a best case and most graduates spend closer to 75-days in the course. One of my officers started the course three times before finally completing it as distinguished honor graduate. One hardly knows what the Army was thinking. If physical standards aren’t radically changed for women, and Bruce Jenner isn’t in the class, human physiology in terms of muscle mass, weight, bone structure, and upper body strength indicate that few, if any, birth-women (I guess we have to start using this now to be clear) can pass the program. Personally, I was betting the Army would fold like a cheap suit. When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says: “Importantly, though, if we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?” The remaining eight female Ranger School candidates failed the first phase of the U.S. Army’s elite infantry program, the Army said in a statement late Friday. Of the eight women, five were kicked out of training. Three others will be allowed to start over from the beginning of the first phase of Ranger School. Those three will start class on June 21. The Army said in a statement that 29 students failed to meet the standards of phase one, also known as the Darby Phase. A vast majority of the students who are being dropped from the course were unable to successfully lead a patrol. All students received multiple opportunities to lead a patrol as a squad or team leader, the Army said. And, of course, the reason we would be questioning that is that any woman’s career is much more important than any number of bodies left strewn about a battlefield. Much to my surprise, the Ranger cadre have held firm to the macro-standards. Of the 19 women in the first class, eleven did not complete the first four days, the Ranger Assessment Program — what used to be known as City Phase, of the course. At the end of the Darby Phase, the remaining eight women were recycled having failed to meet the standard necessary to move on to Mountain Phase at Camp Frank D. Merrill in Dahlonega, Georgia. At the end of the recycle period, five of the remaining eight women were dropped from the course. Three were allowed to start with a new class from Day One. This would entail retaking the Ranger Assessment Program. [The full SNAFU] Don't even start.  There is nobody on this blog who loves women more than me, but puh-leeez!  I am forever and  adamantly against throwing our women into combat roles for the obvious sexist (yes, it is technically sexist) reasons—which necessitate letting women cadets at West Point parade with lightweight wood replicas of the rifles the man carry—as I'm told they did; and all the rest the the Patsy Schroederization We Are Woman crap.  But even more importantly, cloistering women with men on long combat tours, especially aboard ships, creates unnecessary tensions plus morale and disciplinary problems.  You know very well what I mean. We don't have to so this.