Combat Is Not Gender Normed, or Died of a Theory. Literally.

One of the developments that has distressed me most over the past years is the descent of the US military into what is now called wokism. The descent began long before the term “woke” gained currency, but it has accelerated since it has, and especially post-20 January.

One of the primary stress points has been over the role of women in combat, especially in the infantry. Clearly here a decisive–and arguably the decisive–issue is physical capacity, notably strength and body mass.

Combat is extraordinarily difficult physically (and mentally as well). It taxes every muscle and sinew. Even movement to combat is physically punishing, especially given the increasing weight of material (including body armor) that the modern soldier must hump before firing a shot.

After WWII, the US Army surveyed veterans. One question they asked was what needed to change in basic training. The overwhelming answer was more physical fitness training. A lot more. Soldiers who had served in the ETO and the jungles of Asia responded that extended combat was far more physically demanding than they had been trained to handle.

In its efforts to integrate women, including into combat billets, the military has had to try to overcome what should be immediately obvious to any sentient being: men are stronger than women. (If this statement offends you, so be it: I am not going to bend to your denial of reality.)

The flash point here has been physical fitness testing. Recently the military adopted a new “Army Combat Fitness Test” (note the word “combat” in the title, as opposed to the old “Army Physical Fitness Test”). The intention was that the test standards would apply equally to women and men, to make sure all had the physical strength required for combat.

The only way this could happen if the test was no test at all. To the extent that the test does impose physical challenges even remotely similar to those required in combat, it was inevitable that women would fail at a far higher rate than men.

And lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened.

But rather than questioning whether this undermined entirely the case for even thinking about letting women serve in infantry units (or other MOS demanding physical strength), the Army is consider gender norming the tests.

Combat is not gender normed. Period.

I say again: combat is not gender normed. A gender normed “combat fitness test” is an oxymoron that makes “military intelligence” look like the epitome of consistency.

I often use Jeff Davis’s phrase “died of a theory.” Here, that will be literally true. People will die. Wars will be lost. The nation’s survival may be at stake.

There are few things more serious–existential even. Serious people–including bad ass women in the military who can hack it physically (there are exceptions to every rule)–understand this. But the US military is currently in the hands of very, very unserious people–and has been for a long time. These are people in thrall to a theory, and are willing to send service men and women to their deaths (and jeopardize the security of the nation) rather than choose reality over theory.

The incoherence of the theorists is also striking. The feminist left argues that men are predisposed to violence and aggression, and are certainly more violent and aggressive than women: indeed, they direct much of their violence and aggression towards women, who are incapable of defense because of their lesser physical strength and aggression. Well, a comparative advantage in violence is an attribute in the military, and this comparative advantage recommends–compels!–that men specialize in socially sanctioned violence–notably in combat arms in the military–and that women specialize in other things.

This is not an assertion of superiority, dominance, or hierarchy. It is a basic point about comparative advantage and specialization. A basic point that is grasped by few, and basically by none on the left, whose obsession with simplistic notions of equality leads them to shrink with horror from the ideas of comparative advantage and specialization.

Yet the same leftist feminists–whose theories have captured the US defense establishment–argue that men and women should not so specialize, but that women and men should both close with enemies in violent combat. In the name of equity. Or something. Like I say, the theorists and the theory are incoherent, so explaining this patent contradiction is beyond the powers of mere mortals.

Various strains of Critical Theories predicated on perverted concepts of equality and delusional views of reality have attacked the brains of those at the pinnacle of the uniformed and civilian hierarchies. I am reminded of this line from Patton’s legendary speech to the Third Army:

The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real battle than they do about fucking

Alas, the bilious bastards who want to gender norm “combat fitness tests” are no longer merely editors and writers for newsweeklies.* They run the US military. God save us.

*There are obviously many in the Pentagon, including those holding flag ranks, who know battle. That actually makes it worse. Most likely out of the intersection of careerism and a political class in thrall to the theory, they are willingly collaborating with–nay, directing–policies that they know are are in conflict with basic reality and which jeopardize lives and the nation’s security.