Unfortunately, in this 'politically correct' world we live in, standards are dropped when women win the right to join.  In addition, women are often (but not always) treated differently within a given unit.  This is not to say women ask to be treated differently, however just as men behave differently amongst women in the real world, they often fall into doing the same in the armed forces.

 

There is no escaping blokes thinking, "I could f*** that", and that does not make for positive unit cohesion.

I have not read the whole list.  I would like to say that there are more options than people are thinking about.

 

1. no women in SF

 

2.  Women in current SF units.

 

3.  New all women SF units with differnt copacitys and goals.

 

3. may be a good idea.  The same logic of putting small groups of chossen men together for special kinds of jobs can work with women.  The problems of women not having the same land speed or lifting capacity of men only matter if you are pluging a women into a job desighned for the top preforming men.  If you are desighning new jobs for women you could do a lot.

 

Crack Military police unit of all women with high language and culture skills.  They look like they are there to search and hold femail prisonors but they are really running femail based informer networks. 

 

You could have femail light infantry units and plan for their streanths and limitations.  You don't gain as much there unless your short on people. 

 

All femail formations in comunication and intel work could oout preform men.  If it isn't about running and throughing shootputs women with well desighned training can do it compeativly.  If you have the wrong kind of feminism in your culture you lose some quality women because they arn't looking for their contribution to the war effort but for their protest against tradition. 

 

A key idea here is that we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of women off the street being inducted and procesed.  We are talking smaller numbers of highly intelegent motavated women who are securety clearence worthy.  Something could be done with that.

Special Forces has always recruited from the extreme end of the bell curve.  Given the requirements I expect that fewer women would qualify than men, but there are definitely some who would and should be encouraged if interested.

 

The claim that women are more 'emotional' than men may be true, but it may also be due to most cultures demanding that men display stoicism and suppress their emotions as part of the warrior mythos and can be learned from training.  But most cultures also claim that women are more 'patient' than men, which is incidentally is the quality that the Russians claimed during WWII made the average woman a better sniper candidate than the average man.

 

Lastly, in societies with segregated sexes (which includes both Islam and to a lesser extent western societies), there are places where women can go and people that they can talk to that men cannot.  Having women as part of the force for these situations then adds another weapon to your arsenal.

Since I knew what Special Forces entailed, I have wanted to be part of it. I would do anything necessary, short of gender change, to be able to. Unfortunately, I can't. The simple fact that some women do not have what it takes is understood, but you can't say all men could cut it in SpecOps. No matter what, it takes training, drive, and initiative. I agree that it should be women who can reach the required levels of fitness, and what ever else, who are allowed. Don't lower the standards just for us. If we want it, we will raise ourselves to your level. The more people say I can't do it, the more I want to. Barring me, or any woman, from SpecOps is just asking for us to kick your butts. And I would be more than happy. 

paul you are mixing up intel work and sf doorkicking types i think. intel work is about mental toughness and skills more than physical skills. if a spook needs to resort to punching/shooting etc the mission's probably pooched already.

women can train for endurance etc the same way you can with men but their achilles heel is upper body strength. vanishingly few women have enough upper body strength to be competitive with men. ignoring the psych strains of women in small units it's just plain terribly difficult to find a woman who can shlep a 90 lb pack for 25 miles in a time even vaguely comparable to her male counterparts. you have for instance a recon team that needs to carry in 400 lbs of gear and supplies and needs to do it invisibly. if the woman on the team can only cart about 60 lbs what do you do about the other 40 lb of gear that must go in. going to lump another 13 lb of kit on the other men in the patrol? or thin the supplies out and hope you won't miss the 40 lb of "must have" kit?

What are women doing in Cival Afairs and PsyOps?  I know that is not the poiont for many people.  If you were a woman who really could go their and do that would the CIA be a way to get into the triger puller position?  It might be a way around the millitairy wide rules. 

 

I know a story about a Co-Cong sniper who saw to Americans stop on what was sopost to be their patrol and smoke weed.  Her messanger a young boy reported her for not shooting them.  She defended her self by arguning that those two Americans were less of a treat than the ones who would replace them if she shoot them.  Not to argue for or against her logic but just to show that at some levels of training a women might be more likly to think of problems in context of why they are fighting.  How many guys would take two for their score book and move on?  Now I belive that at the SF level of training this male weakness is eather trained out of people or desired and planed on.  Different units going one way or the other. 

 

 

the upper body strength issue is a big difference tween men and women.  there's a video of a firefighter exercise floating about the net that demonstrates this nicely.  the task is to put up a ladder against a building and while every male team managed the feat with no particular exertion the teams with women had to work noticeably harder to get the thing up against the wall.  the one team was all women and it was just farcial to watch them work their tails off and fall short.  they got it up in the end but it took them 4 or 5 tries and could easily have resulted in people getting brained by the falling ladder at an actual fire.

 

lowering the quals for women is a terrible terrible notion as well as insulting the women who do make it through.

Really, I'm mostly interested in being a trained sniper, and I can sit in rain and cold with out having to move constantly or complaining. Having an older brother who played football helped with that. And it really bothers me when guys act differently around me. I try to act less like one of the girly girls who are obsessed with shopping and looking perfect and more like me; a girl who can play football, take hits and hit back. 

Now I'm just rambling in hopes of convincing you that I can act like 'one of the guys' and be useful. And if a 15 yr-old girl can survive a week of college football weight training, she better be good for something!