When the President ordered the military to integrate women into combat, several generals promised that women would be held to the same standards, vowing that women would undergo the same training as men. Back then, I pointed out that this was not really true even under the proposed “same standards” combat training, because despite the fact that women and men had to take the same physical tests, they were scored differently. For example, a man who scored well above the cutoff for women could still fail.
Now, however, even that isn’t good enough for our intrepid, heroic female politicians, like Rep. Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts, who bravely spent the deadliest years of the Vietnam War as a political intern in Virginia and a social worker in New York.
Tsongas, in a profound insight, has suggested that men and women might not perform equally under the same standards, saying “To put in place a training regimen that is ill-suited to maximizing the success of women is not really the outcome any of us want to see.” However, what she does want to see remains unstated.
I think I can guess. She wants to see an easier training regimen that qualifies them as “combat” specialists so that they can receive the extra pay and promotion privileges that entails. She may want to see a few new combat specialties added as well, such as combat desk specialist, combat smartphone operator, combat typist, etc. Those who bravely engage in combat typing, combat texting and the like would then be entitled to higher pay and higher-level job opportunities. Because, after all, they deserve a higher level of respect and authority than those loser non-combat MOS dudes who do worthless things like fix helicopter engines and operate radar.
