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Girls and boys are biologically different. This is a scientific fact. Scientists can identify the two sexes by DNA testing. There are anomalies and there is also gender, which can be fluid. If schools taught basic biology, we wouldn’t have to keep reinforcing this. Two items in the news made us realize that we need Volume 578 of the girls and boys are different argument.
On his first day in occupying the Oval Office, in the midst of a global pandemic, Joe Biden signed an executive order that allows transgender athletes to compete in the gender they identify with. The effect is to erase women. They cannot compete with biological males who identify as girls. Why is this? As Live Science explained:
Given that both men and women train equally hard, why is it that men, on average, are faster runners than women? Even the world’s fastest man is about a second speedier on the 100-meter dash than the world’s fastest woman: Usain Bolt did it in 9.58 seconds, versus the late Florence Griffith Joyner’s time of 10.49 seconds.
The answer to this gender bender is multifold, but it has a lot to do with hormones and body size, doctors told Live Science. [Who Are the World’s Fastest Man and Woman?]
Before girls and boys hit puberty, their bodies are fairly similar. During puberty, however, boys experience a surge of testosterone. By adulthood, some men have up to 20 times more testosterone than women do, according to HealthLine.
Even Claire Graham, who is an intersex advocate, recognizes that there are two biological sexes:
But if Differences in Sexual Development (DSD) trouble the idea of binary sex, wouldn’t that mean that sex should be understood as more of a spectrum? If so, how many sexes are there? Some cultures are said to acknowledge five or seven sexes…
CG: It is not a spectrum, although I know that’s a popular theory. There are only two sexes in humans. As I say, sex is the language we use to describe reproduction. People have potential to be either large gamete producers, or small gamete producers. No one produces both; no one produces something else.
Since the Biden Executive Order, states are passing laws to require transgender athletes to compete in their biological sex. Transgender athletes are fighting back. According to USA Today:
Proponents of banning transgender athletes from girls and women’s sports say trans girls and women have unfair advantages over cisgender women.
For trans advocates like six-time Team USA duathlete and triathlete Chris Mosier and world track cycling champion Veronica Ivy, that argument doesn’t hold up. They say trans kids, like 14-year-old field hockey player Rebekah Bruesehoff, have the same right to play sports as other kids.
In individual sports, the trans athletes would dominate the sport. In team sports, I could see a situation where have a biological male on a girls team would be an advantage. Say, for instance, volleyball or basketball. Don’t believe me? Check out this video of 50 year old, Navy veteran, Gabrielle Ludwig, now playing for a community college:
Whoa, Nelly. That wide body, with hands the size of platters, will beat the other team every time. Look, I don’t care who you identify as man, woman or Enar’s unicorn. Girls and boys are different. Why can’t we accept that?
The other item that caught my attention is that the Army may have to abandon it’s Gender Neutral Physical Fitness Test. I bet you already know why. Girls cannot keep up:
However, a Pentagon study has found up to 65 per cent of women were failing the ACFT, compared to just 10 per cent for men, according to the Telegraph.
The average score difference between men and women has been up to 100 points.
An army officer told Military.com: “We have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders.”
The military first addressed problems with the differences in both genders back in 2019, highlighting that it was monitoring how men and women were performing.
Maj. Gen. Lonnie Hibbard said at a press conference: “If you look at some of the blogs, it talked about the failure rates, and we are seeing a difference in failure rates. We have to learn how to train for this test.”
Clearly, the Army doesn’t know the difference between biological sex and gender. That’s problem one. The second problem is that this is not a training issue. This is a biology issue.
A new look test was brought in October last year to help address the gap in men versus women’s scores.
Instead of the leg tuck from the bar, soldiers can do a two-minute plank instead, with research showing female soldiers performing better in that area.
UPI reports the unfairness in the tests for men and women gave unrealistic requirements for service members in non-combat roles like medicine and cybersecurity.
Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry of the Training and Doctrine Command told the Army Times that the Army ‘is looking at means to apply those scores based on gender to account for biological differences’.
Reading that last paragraph, the Army seems so confused. Maybe, and I am spitballing here, is that the social experiment of pretending men and women are the same and diversity is king is at odds with the mission of the Army:
-Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States
-Supporting the national policies
-Implementing the national objectives
-Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States
There are places for both men and women in this mission. Both are important. But, girls and boys are biologically different. End Volume 578.
Featured Image: PlayingWithBrushes/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
NTSOG says: “An army officer told Military.com: “We have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders.”
‘Fair’? Nature is fair in that women have the same opportunity to pass physical performance tests as men if they are fit and strong enough. It’s not the military’s fault that nature ‘built’ women and men differently, but the military as well as other agencies, e.g. emergency services, whose members have to perform in dangerous circumstances must set its standards according to the actual risks that its members will face in the field, not in some political office or social studies department in a university. As I have written before [as a physical educator] by late primary school and certainly in early secondary school the physical differences between boys and girls are becoming obvious requiring careful management of co-educational activities so as to give girls a chance and prevent them being injured in the face of direct competition with increasingly bigger, stronger and more aggressive boys. It would be negligent and unfair for any [PE] teacher to ignore such differences that might result in injury to girls. Apparently Mother Nature [including gravitational force] must now conform to current social theories and the actual performance demands of certain tasks/activities are irrelevant.
GWB says: Because our society is so well-off and so safe and so comfortable that people believe ALL natural differences can be swiped away because they can ignore the consequences of nature for so many other things, already: sexual promiscuity, diseases, aging, addictions, etc. Why can’t we just ignore the consequences of gravity and biological gender?
GWB says: there is also gender, which can be fluid
Bullcarp. Gender is an expression of biological sex. Period. There might be 57 varieties of mental illness. But there are only two genders, with fairly broad boundaries of expression that overlap based on culture. At least for sane people.
(Now, gender roles are something else. There might even be more than two – eunuchs often fill unique gender roles in cultures where they are considered normal. There might be more than three, and some might not be gender-assigned. But there are only two genders – or three with eunuchs – in any semi-sane culture.)
the Army may have to abandon it’s Gender Neutral Physical Fitness Test
But NOT because it was ineffective in determining who was ready for combat. Only because it failed in balancing combat numbers to the 50/50 some people think it should be. Because women ARE NOT men. And men are equipped for things like manual labor and fighting.
The average score difference between men and women has been up to 100 points.
Note that’s a 16% difference out of the total possible score. And that’s the average difference. Now, if they could just convince some of those Rangers and Seals to put on a skirt, they might get their averages up (see the first issue)……..
unrealistic requirements for service members in non-combat roles
No. All military roles should be able to generally meet “combat” requirements. Otherwise, you’re not a soldier, you’re a civilian REMF who wears a funny set of clothes to work. (I had an admin troop in our unit living with the Army, and they had this attitude. I did not trust this person if we ever had to actually deploy with them.)
-Supporting the national policies
-Implementing the national objectives
Well, honestly, the national policies and objectives now are “affirm the mental illness of individuals and make everywhere look like a special rainbow coalition of all colors of skin and body parts and mental illnesses.” So, the Army is spot on task!
NTSOG says: “All military roles should be able to generally meet “combat” requirements.”
“Captain Ben L. Salomon was serving at Saipan, in the Marianas Islands on July 7, 1944, as the Surgeon for the 2nd Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division.”
When his aid station was over-run and Japanese troops started killing wounded US soldiers Dr. Salomon took defensive action killing as many as 98 Japanese, but allowing the wounded he had been treating to escape before he was killed.
GWB says: Yep. Another I remember (because it was in the back of a comic) was a radio operator who defended his position in the command post as he sent out the call they were being overrun. “But I’m just a radio operator!” was not his cry.
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I noticed and commented on that ACFT issue a couple of weeks ago.
This whole thing is just another sign of the politicization of the military.
You’re telling me that no one in the Army who designed this “one size fits all” AFCT even considered the possibility that a disparity between the performance of men and women might be a factor?
The fact that they had to try this out for a significant period of time before realizing what anyone who’s ever competed in or even watched post-pubescent age sports could have told them immediately speaks more to the incompetence of the military minds involved than anything else.
This is what happens when senior military leadership are promoted for their political expertise and demographic membership rather than for actual military effectiveness.
If we ever are forced to defend ourselves against a nation with a military that isn’t a joke, we’re going to get our asses handed to us.
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