It's possible you may have misinterpreted my point.
I don't remember the details, but in the early days of integrating women into Navy aviation I thought there were rumbles of relaxed standards. Yet the aircraft shouldn't care about the gender of the pilot. Reducing standards under the philosophy of "girls are weaker" is not the right approach. The standards would be the minimum acceptable to safely accomplish the mission regardless of gender.
I think it should be the same for physical career fields. The women should be held to the same minimum physical standards as the men. Yes, the typical female will be slower, weaker, and less aggressive than the typical male. However the community wouldn't be looking for typical men, typical women, or typical purple people eaters. They'd be looking for outstanding (and motivated) candidates who could meet the same minimum physical standards that all members of that community had to meet. A woman might have to be the top 1% of her gender to perform at the same level as the top 10% of the males, but who cares about the relative ranking if she can do the job? I bet that 1% woman is also more motivated & committed than the 9.99% males.
There are many more men who are qualified to be submariners than women. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately) most of those men have chosen to do other things. That leaves room in the submarine force for women volunteers who also meet the minimum requirements and are much more motivated than the men. I've served in the submarine force with (male) officers who were "drafted", and it was not fun.
I think that in most cases it's blatant discrimination. Look at the differences in men & women's surfing.
It'd be interesting to watch a top women's team (of just about any professional sport) take on a lower-ranked men's team. It'd be just like watching a top college team (of either gender) take on a professional minor-league team. Unfortunately the (male-dominated) sports-media business thinks no one would pay to watch the competition, or buy ads during it.
I've watched women compete against men in taekwondo, where the sparring classes are based on age & weight. I've seen quite a few women kick the assets and heads of those men, too. There are a couple women in my dojang who weigh 60 pounds (33%) less than me, and I wouldn't take them on in a match unless we were allowed to go for knockout head shots. Otherwise I'd lose the match by at least seven points.
Heh... I've served with quite a few gay servicemembers (so has my spouse) and never observed this problem among the guys or the women. Everyone's managed to be professional about it. Why should it change when women join the community? And are we supposed to lock women out of a community because the men can't be professional about it? This reminds me of the submarine admiral (long since retired) who said "No, we can't have women in the submarine force, because the wives' clubs would never put up with it."
The logic here sounds like "Well, we shouldn't put the best people on the job because it wouldn't play well to the American media." Or again, we shouldn't do something with our "A" teams because someone else couldn't handle it in a professional manner.
I agree-- it shouldn't be a social experiment. It's all about finding qualified candidates... and retaining them. In 2007 the submarine force's retention of junior officers was about 6%. Kinda hard to maintain the quality of department heads, XOs, & COs when you only start with six out of every hundred. I've served with that type of retention, too, and it was even uglier than the guys who were drafted. At least the draftees were smart, if not necessarily motivated.
As Gumby mentioned in an earlier thread, one of the difficulties of integrating women into the submarine force is finding enough women who [-]were dropped on their heads as infants[/-] think that joining the submarine force is a good idea. My daughter does not like hearing that she's a candidate for a community mainly because it's a job which no one else wants. I tell her that it's good training for someday being a civil engineer in charge of a sewage system.
One of my USNA classmates was Eddie Meyers, the pro football player. A few decades later his daughter made the women's Olympic bobsled team. I can't imagine Eddie telling his daughter that she couldn't do something in the military because she's not good enough... what would you tell your daughter?
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