OK, I gotta say it. Women don't belong in combat.

[cer7711]

65. Male & Female Marines Are Tested Against Two Completely Different Physical Fitness Standards

Tammy Duckworth was an army helicopter pilot, not infantry. The infantry (or "grunts", in USMC parlance) is a whole different kettle of fish.

You are correct that the front lines can be anywhere, now. And I certainly don't doubt that women can be effective, courageous, and accomplished fighters. The history of warfare is replete with examples. History is also very clear that women are not thrown into combat, en masse, until and unless a society is in extremis.

But as to your point "there are no plans to lower standards to accommodate female service personnel", well . . .

https://basix.basixwellness.com/Marine_Corps_Standards

If you examine these charts you will understand something very quickly: Men and women, from the moment they enter Marine Corps boot camp, are judged according to two very different physical fitness standards. Women are assessed, rated and promoted against a lower physical-fitness standard from the day they get off the bus to the moment they DD-214 out of the service.

Example: Men have to run harder, faster, than women to score the same number of physical fitness points in the aerobic conditioning category. Where men have to complete 20 pull-ups in under two minutes to get the maximum score allotted for upper-body strength, women have to do a flexed-arm hang. And trust me, the difference between trying to complete 20 full pull-ups in under 2 minutes and merely hanging there for the duration of the test is . . . well, the difference between being a man and a woman.

The reason these tests are different for men and women is because (if you'll pardon the obvious tautology) men and women are built very differently, morphologically-speaking. And it would be blatantly unfair to women to test them against the male physical fitness standard, as most women--even the strongest--would not pass with anything but mediocre-to-poor marks.

Are we about to let women compete alongside and contend against men in the NFL? Boxing? Wrestling? Basketball? Judo? Golf?

If we recognize that this would be unfair to both genders, for very different reasons, why in god's name would we pretend that--HEY PRESTO!--women are suddenly the physical equals of men in that most brutal, numbing and savage of human endeavors: combat?