Women In Combat Essay, Research Paper
Some people believe that for men and women to be equal they have to be the same. Regardless of tradition, strengths, weaknesses, and honor we to be somehow pushed into themold of sameness. Part of that effort is for some to claim that women have to be allowedinto active combat roles. In this paper I m going to discuss some of the attributes of thisidea. Living in the here and now. What does it mean to do so? Life in general has provento be a game of which domino falls first. Because everybody knows that once one falls therest go with it. A huge concern of mine is women going into combat and how it will effectmy life and that of others. If women were to get to be in combat roles what would simplyhappen is that when a war comes and draft is on it s way women are just as susceptible to bedrafted, yet another reason why I find this whole idea revolting. But, I don t only find it revolting ; I also find it ignorant. I will not, however, slant my opinion to the point of totalconfusion for you the reader, but will simply state the facts I have found. I will give yousimple reasoning, scenarios, and ideas, but the choice is ultimately always up to theindividual. Choose wisely. Twenty years ago the concept of women in the military would have been mocked and threatened. Even just the idea of breaking a 5000 year tradition of men fighting in wars,(Infotrac, p3) protecting their families and keeping the peace, is like a kick in the face offreedom. What is failed to realize is the equal workload, when men went off to war womenheld down the fort. Now women also want to fight for the freedom of the fort. Women arenot only in the military, but they are also gaining respect and status. One problem remainshowever; according to feminine activists the ban on woman in the infantry/combat roles is aninjustice and should be removed. Typicality in thought and reasoning of the pro-feminist isthat the only qualifications needed for combat include honor, courage, and wittiness.(Infotrac,p5) Leaving one thing out, physical strength. Why is physical strength so vital in an infantry situation? Or is it? Too say that s ithold no importance would only be a pure mockery of the military s training techniques andvalues. To make a statement even remotely implying that physical strength is a small factorshows obvious misconceptions of the reality of war. War means carrying heavy equipment,living in close and unhealthy conditions, being unsanitary and so forth. War means hardtraining and little rest. Bonding with others and keeping high moral. War means equalityamong the group. Within some of the tasks there may be not such a high value on physical strength.(CMR) However, everyone still has minimum requirements as to how fast you can run andhow many pushups you can do. Yet the army doesn t need physical strength? Infantry unitsespecially stress full physical fitness. Minimum standards of men are only met by 5% of themost in fit women, and they aren t your best fighters, they are only just meeting the loweststandards. (Digest, p141) A series of tests with ROTC cadets at the University of Michigan proved that only asmall percentage of high-achieving women are capable of physical achievement comparableto low-achieving men. (Infotrac p2) Also it was proved that male underachievers usually hadthe muscle mass and aerobic capacity to improve their scores, but women at the same levelalready havoc reached a maximum level beyond which can not physically improved. Males
on average have 40 to 50 percent more upper-body muscular strength and 25 to 30 percentmore of the aerobic ability needed for endurance. (Digest, p142) Unit strength andreadiness still depend on the ability to carry heavy survival gear, weapons and provisionsover rough terrain in all weather conditions. These qualities remain extremely important in ornear front-line units where women do not have an equal opportunity to survive or to helpfellow soldiers survive. Offering women roles throughout the military has made a double standard among thegrading and passing of soldiers through training. The tests have been so gender sensitive thata D for man is equivalent to an A for a woman. (Digest p 139) Equal performance has beendropped to equal effort. Why train 100 women to only be able to actually have 5 of them stay? But more than5 stay and that is because of the lowering of standards in the military. If a man were to passthe woman s physical test and yet not get the minimum requirements of men, then he wouldnot make it, so why does the US military have double standards? We know that it isdangerous to put that man who doe not pass the women s minimum requirements, yet it s OKto send a woman out that can t meet the men s requirements? For example, men need to do pull-ups, in which women only need to hold their bodies up to a bar for a couple minutes. Men run a 14 minute 2 mile run while women run an18-mile run. (CMR) All of this is logic, yet for some reason the military has become theplayground of female activists. Besides all of these physical differences, we also forget abouthormones. A presidential-commission survey of Desert Storm military personnel found that 64percent reported sexual activity between men and women in their units, meaning thatregardless of the rules, men and women are still men and women with the same hormonaldrive that they had when they left for the army. Yet another problem was brought to my attention from Adam Johnson, a friend ofmine, and also a Lance Corporal who is now stationed in Japan, this is how he put it: Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with women in the military. There are a lot ofguys here, like the majority that would disagree with me. But if this is what she really wantsto do, then I don’t think anything should stop her. As far as jobs, I don’t think women belongin some of them. Like infantry. I’m infantry, so I can give some examples as to why. Wespend the majority of our time in the field with no bathrooms, showers, any of the good stuff.We are out there from anywhere from a week to a month straight in those conditions. If we ever went to combat, the time could turn into months on end. And Iknow a lot of guys said their hormones would be hard to control if a female was out therewith them. And there are some stories I heard that I don’t think you want to hear. This alone could scare somebody into seeing that combat isn t made for women. It snot as though the rules are meant to deprive women of their rights, rather save her fromdifferent things. Unsanitary conditions being one of them. I don t know one woman whocould go 2 days without a shower, let alone weeks or even months. Women shouldn t bediscontent because they aren t allowed to be in combat, rather at peace that men haveenough respect to keep them out. I believe that the moral standard of our country would dropconsiderable amounts if we were to draft women. Womanhood should be cherished andchildren shouldn t have to ever fear that their 120 pound mother is being mutilated by a 200pound ogre.