Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Gender Neutral?

Kathleen Parker suggests that the Army should segregate men and women in basic training. She implies that women are too giggly and girly to make it as rough and tumble soldiers.
I've seen the entire spectrum of women in the Army from physically and mentally weak women who never should have been recruited to a few women that I would want in an infantry squad with me. It seems like men and women fight together pretty well in Iraq these days, though.
Weak women and weak men should not be allowed in the Army. I've always thought that women should have to meet the same standards as men, because the terrorists do no discriminate when they are shooting at you. If a woman or a man can't meet the standard of combat, they need to go.
update: check out the comments section for this post. Mark from Schadenfreude weighs in with his (lengthy but interesting) opinion. I tend to agree... We need to make sure that we don't make the Army as a whole weaker in our quest to fully integrate the "fairer" sex.