Surprise, right?

All-male ground combat units in the Marines were faster, more lethal and less injured than units with mixed genders, according to a Marine Corps study that looked at integrating women into all service jobs.

“All male squads, teams and crews demonstrated higher performance levels on 69 percent of tasks evaluated (93 of 134) as compared to gender-integrated squads, teams and crews,” according a summary of the report released Thursday.

Under the regime of Barack Obama, there has been a conscious attack on traditional Western values. From its support of homosexuality as a privileged life-style choice to the brutal assault on college age men carried out by its Department of Education, the government has sought to penalize traditional values in private life and eradicate them in the public square. No single area has suffered more that the combat units of the armed forces.

Feminists have pursued the dangerous pipe dream of infusing women into front line combat units for several decades. The first step was taken with the abolition of the Women’s Army Corps in 1978. It has moved in fits and starts. In the late 70s the Army opened some field artillery units to women (no, the field artillery motto is not “Fat Asses, Wear Glasses and FDC means Fire Direction Center not Five Dumb C***suckers) then closed them. In 1980, the Army allowed a woman into the Special Forces Qualification Course (note: what administration inflicted these experiments on the military?). Captain Kathleen Wilder was dropped from the course but sued in federal court over her dismissal and was eventually awarded a ‘certificate of completion’ and thus became the first female Green Beret.

The fact is that though there are some tasks women do quite well, perhaps even better than men, there are many where they are totally unsuited. For instance, in the late 70s, as the Women’s Army Corps was abolished and the women in that organization reassigned to non-combat units, many women ended up as truck drivers. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? The organization for a truck company is predicated on one driver per truck because it is assumed that the driver can change a flat tire. What these units found was that virtually no women truck drivers could perform the task because they lacked the strength to manhandled (yes, SJW types, that is a word, look it up) the spare. Instead of rethinking, the Army proceeded apace and assigned two people to any truck that had a woman driver that was not part of a convoy. Suddenly, the lift capacity of a truck company want reduced by the number of women drivers. While there is always the chorus that claims women should be in armor and artillery because, you know, they ride and don’t have to carry gear, there is always this — breaking track in the mud

This requires muscle.

And, of course, there is the fact that a certain number of women will use pregnancy as way of avoiding some duties. For instance, during the Gulf War the USS Acadia, a supply ship, became the first Navy ship to go to war with a mixed crew of men and women (this was before Facebook discovered 56 genders). About 1/3 of the crew were women for a total of 360. Of those 36 became pregnant earning the Acadia the name The Love Boat. Funny, until you realize that all 36 pregnant sailors were sent ashore and 36 non-pregnant sailors had to be found to take their place.

Other nations have experimented with women in combat units, Soviet snipers and fighter pilots and Israeli infantry during their War of Independence, but those have been nations in extremis; nations in a situation where warm bodies were desperately needed. In both cases, as soon as danger had passed women were removed from combat units.

As much as feminists and various SJWs don’t want to admit it, women are not merely men with vaginas (though there are a lot of those out there). If you believe in evolution you know that women are optimized for one activity: bearing children. Trust me. That is science. You can look it up. If you don’t believe in evolution you know God created woman optimized for one activity. That would be bearing children. Along with the plumbing comes other things. Like bone structure and muscle mass. More science for the SJWs because I KNOW they all love f***ing science:

Not only are women, on average, about 6 inches taller than the average woman (5-10 versus 5-4) and he’s going to outweigh her by, on average, 30 pounds. But even if the man and woman are the same height and weigh the woman is going to have less than 2/3 of the lean muscle mass of the male. This is why a 5-4 male soldier can carry a crap-load more weight than a 5-4 woman. And then you have the physiology of the pelvic girdle, hips and knees which, in a woman, are all designed for allowing her to give birth and to maintain mobility while pregnant.

Even in NPR’s fawning story of a newly created Israeli battalion that has men and women (apparently the Israelis, like the rest of us, spend a lot of time and effort relearning old lessons), they have this to say:

Prince says women don’t have to carry quite as much gear as men. But otherwise they’re treated the same — in theory, anyway.

Ummm, no. If you are moving on foot and you aren’t carrying “quite as much gear as men,” somewhere there is a man carrying your gear. And that is not being treated the same. The technical term for that is “mascot.”

When the USMC was forced to open the Marine Infantry Officer course to women, 29 hand-picked, highly motivated and highly prepared women entered 0 finished.

The Army was able to force two women through Ranger school. About 60% of all Ranger students graduate though many are turned back at the end of a phase to repeat it. While the Army is adamant that they went through the same training course as the men, that is only part of the story. During the mandatory Ranger Training Assessment Course, 109 women participated generating 138 attempts (this indicates 29 repeats by one or more student), and 20 were passed. Men usually return to their units to await a slot for the school. The nineteen women who volunteered after RTAC began a program of intensive training for about two months before reporting. They started Ranger School, which is 62 (+/-) days long, on April 19 and graduated on August 21 or over 120 days later.

This is not to say the two women didn’t earn their Ranger tab. I wasn’t there and I only know what I hear. But what I will say that is indisputable is that ordinarily 19 Ranger School slots would have generated 14 Ranger qualified officers or soldiers for the US Army. This experiment pulled 19 women from their units for as much as 8 months for the sole purpose of creating a press event and created two women who wear a Ranger Tab, to what end, no one is certain. From a sheer balance sheet perspective, this was a profoundly stupid exercise.

But back to the subject of women in combat units. Israel determined that when you mixed men and women together the men tried to protect the women; the men took extraordinary risks to keep women safe; the units became less effective as there was a desire to keep the women safe; and, if women were killed or injured it hurt the morale of the unit much more than a man becoming a casualty. SJWs would say that those impulses are a function of an evil patriarchy and should be eradicated. The rest of us see that the men had natural (evolutionary) impulses to protect women (to allow the species to continue) and they had a noble, social impulse because in civilized societies women are cherished and protected.

Naturally, Obama appointee as Secretary of Navy is incensed:

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Friday criticized a Marine Corps study that showed that female Marines in a mixed unit did not perform as well as men in several key areas.

“They started out with a fairly largely component of the men thinking this is not a good idea, and women will not be able to do this,” he said in an interview with NPR.

 “When you start out with that mindset, you’re almost presupposing the outcome,” he said.

The report, released Thursday, is part of the Marine Corps’ efforts to study integrating women into the infantry, in order to meet a 2012 order by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to open all military jobs to women.

Services must open all jobs to women by January, or else submit requests for exceptions by the end of this month. Defense Secretary Ash Carter will then review the requests and make final decisions by early next year.

And you get this howler:

“Part of the study said women tend not to be able to carry as heavy a load for as long. but there were women who went through the study who could,” he said.

“And part of the study said we’re afraid because women get injured more frequently that over time, women will break down more, that you’ll begin to lose your combat effectiveness over time.”

“That was not shown in the study, that was an extrapolation based on injury rates,” he said.

Does he even listen to himself. The point is not that some women could carry the load. The point is that a) most couldn’t carry the load and b) if a male Marine can’t carry the load he’s removed from the unit, with women you have Marines who are known to be unable to carry the load being forced in. I’d also like to remind this clown that extrapolation based of observation is really science-y. I don’t know what his alternative suggestion would be.

So we have a guy who has never carried anything heavier than a coffee cup declaring that a) the Marines are biased, b) that their bias is incorrect, and c) that he doesn’t care how many dead Marines it costs so long as he puts women into infantry units.

A couple of years ago, former Special Forces officer and now a freelance war correspondent, wrote an article titled “Seven Myths About Women In Combat.” I’ll borrow as many of them as I think Fair Use will allow, but please read the whole thing:

Myth #4 – “Standards won’t be lowered.”

This is the cruelest myth of all. The statements of the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are telling.

They essentially declare “guilty until proven innocent” on anyone attempting to maintain the standards which produced the finest fighting force in the world. There are already accommodations (note that unit cohesion won’t be a metric), there will be many more, and we will pay a bloody price for it someday.

Pity the truthful leader who attempts to hold to standards based on realistic combat factors, and tells truth to power. Most won’t, and the others won’t survive.

Myth #5 – “Opening the infantry will provide a better pathway to senior rank for the talented women.”

Not so. What will happen is that we will take very talented females with unlimited potential and change their peer norm when we inject them into the infantry.

Those who might meet the infantry physical standard will find that their peers are expected, as leaders, to far exceed it (and most of their subordinates will, as well).

So instead of advancing to a level appropriate to their potential, they may well be left out.

Myth #6 – “It’s a civil rights issue, much like the integration of the armed forces and allowing gays to serve openly.”

Those who parrot this either hope to scare honest and frank discussion, or confuse national security with utopian ideas.

In the process, they demean initiatives that were to provide equally skilled individuals the opportunity to contribute equally. In each of the other issues, lowered standards were not the consequence.

Myth #7 – “It’s just fair.”

Allow me two points.

First, this is ground warfare we’re discussing, so realism is important.

“Fair” is not part of the direct ground combat lexicon.

Direct ground combat, such as experienced in the frozen tundra of Korea, the rubble of Stalingrad, or the endless 30-day jungle patrols against a grim foe in Viet Nam, is the harshest meritocracy — with the greatest consequences — there is.

And psychology in warfare is germane – the force that is respected (and, yes, feared) has a distinct advantage.

Will women in our infantry enhance a psychological advantage, or hinder it?

Second, if it’s about fairness, why do women get a choice of whether to serve in the infantry (when men do not), and why aren’t they required to register for the draft (as men are)?

It may be that we live in a society in which honest discussion of this issue, relying on facts instead of volume, is not possible. If so, our national security will fall victim to hope instead of reality. And myths be damned.

We all know what is driving this. A certain variety of SJW woman, and they are in the military officer ranks in spades — the daughter of a friend of mine is a serving Army officer and she is convinced that all that is holding all women back from being Rangers is patriarchy– believes that by breaking open infantry and armor  and special forces to women that it will allow more women to become generals. Period. Full stop. But, as Clint Eastwood (as “Dirty” Harry Callahan) said in The Enforcer: if you want to be a lumberjack you have to hold up your end of the log.” There is precious little evidence that any non-trivial number of women have the physical strength and endurance to be a lumberjack. And no one should want their kid led by someone whose sole reason for being a combat arms officer is upward mobility.