Army ranger school to graduate 2 female students
- Thread starter Monello
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Larry Gude
Strung Out
Why?
The Marine Corps worked this through with a bunch of woman some time back. It's not that woman don't have the guts, heart, endurance, smarts or attitude. The problem is that this sort of demand simply destroys women physically faster, much faster, than men. It DESTROYS men. Why have women trained up this way into a job that is far more likely to make them physically unable to perform their duties much sooner than guys? I read this like "Women graduate plow horse school!" or "Women able to carry 100 pounds of stuff long past the point where their knees are ruined and their back will give them trouble for the rest of their lives"
Why?
The Marine Corps worked this through with a bunch of woman some time back. It's not that woman don't have the guts, heart, endurance, smarts or attitude. The problem is that this sort of demand simply destroys women physically faster, much faster, than men. It DESTROYS men. Why have women trained up this way into a job that is far more likely to make them physically unable to perform their duties much sooner than guys? I read this like "Women graduate plow horse school!" or "Women able to carry 100 pounds of stuff long past the point where their knees are ruined and their back will give them trouble for the rest of their lives"
Why?
glhs837
Power with Control
Because they want to. If the fact that it destroys men doesn't stop us from putting men through it, it should not stop us from putting women through it. If a career as a special operator ends for women at say 8 years as opposed to a man getting 10 years out of it, well, that's the way it goes. If we are willing to do this for simple sport, why not be willing to do this for the military?
Larry Gude
Strung Out
If it were as you say, 80%, that would be one thing. It's not. It's something like 10-15%. IIRC the Marines destroyed the women in less than 18 months. If I can find it, I think it was less than that. Womens knees are especially more vulnerable than mens.
And we don't 'put' men through it. They choose to go do it. And we destroy the men doing it because that is the whole point. This is not about training to be able to run a marathon or achieve some level of great fitness and health. It's about crushing people out and why do we want this for women??? You say these women chose it and, we'll see. Did they actually 100% do the same stuff? So they say. Point being we don't have a societal interest in men making it. We take zero notice of any man making it. So, we have a novel interest in this, especially the politics of it, and that, to me, does not speak to the interests of the defense of the nation. It speaks to politics and THAT makes it worse, using these women as political fodder. So we say let them choose and, OK, so, for what? This is going to make the Rangers better?
libertytyranny
Dream Stealer
Actually, women have several advantages over men. While men are generally stronger and in *some* circumstance shave higher endurance because of their higher Vo2 max and larger blood pumping hearts...women do have some distinct advantages in certain circumstances. Men do not always have the edge in physical activity.
Women appear to burn more fat and less carbohydrate than men during endurance exercise (Tate & Holtz, Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology 23: 570-82, 1998; Carter et al., American Journal of Physiology 280: E898-907, 2001). This offers women the possibility that, in events taking two hours or more to complete, their supply of liver and muscle glycogen (a storage form of carbohydrate) will outlast that of men. The reasons for this greater reliance on fat are not fully understood but may relate to estrogen's effects on metabolism, since male rats given estrogen burn less glycogen than male control rats during prolonged treadmill exercise (Kendrick & Ellis, Journal of Applied Physiology 71: 1694-9, 1991; Rooney et al., Journal of Applied Physiology 75: 1502-6, 1993), although similar studies in humans have yielded mixed results (Tarnopolsky et al., International Journal of Sports Medicine 22: 175-80, 2001; Carter et al., Journal of Applied Physiology 90: 139-46, 2001). As a side note, estrogen may also protect muscles from exercise-induced damage under some circumstances (Tiidus, Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology 25: 274-87, 2000).
It has been shown that women can sometimes finish ultramarathons in times similar to those of men who can beat them in "short" (26.2-mile) marathons (Bam et al., Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 29: 244-7, 1997). And when men and women with equivalent marathon times are pitted against each other in ultras, the women tend to win (Speechly et al., Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 28: 359-65, 1996).
Also of note that women tend to perform better than when the temperature is high, as they are generally smaller
glhs837
Power with Control
It's not those things Larry is talking about. It's the mechanical loading of the body's joints, asking the human machine to simply do more than it mechanically can. Not talking about how winded you are after a long march, or how fast you recover from a sprint, but the damage done to your joints and such from loading them up and them performing strenuous activity for long periods. Similar to how my back is in poor shape because of the things I did in the service but in a more systemic way. It's common knowledge that folks who have spent significant amounts of time performing these duties face very real disabilities just from doing those jobs.